[NTLUG:Discuss] Some background on tomorrow's meeting, Saturday 10/19

[Christopher Cox]

My (former) U-verse TV is (was) U200 and costs us $103/mo.

$21 of that is the extra receivers we have.
$10 is for HD

The base U200 is $72.00

Then come the "taxes" of $16.43 for various state and local taxes.... (yuk)

That brings my total TV bill to $119.43/mo.

........

Well, that's the message that helped start it all.  AT&T in a classic "bait and
switch" technique tricked us (employees) to sign up with huge discounts during a
time in which they knew they were selling our division off to IBM (and the
employees did *not* know)....  thus we got U-verse U200 for around $50,
additional receivers were free, digital phone was free, etc..

Obviously, once we were sold, the price went back to the "norm".  Genius move on
AT&T's part?  Maybe...  maybe, not!!

Having been a Comcast and Time Warner customer, I know that at least compared to
those, U-verse is the "Cadillac" of subscriber style television (including
price)... but all of the providers aren't interested in a price war, so prices
stay elevated and really based on "costs" more in tune with the early 2000's.

Shoot, I think we can all think of something to do with $120/mo., right?

And... is it possible to do better than the "cadillac" of providers??

And... did AT&T "bait and switch" us again?  (that setup was too easy, I think
you know the answer is "yes", but find out how they did it this time).