I'm not one of nature's ranters. For the most part I'm happy with my lot but two companies with which I deal regularly cause me to have an occasional mutter.
The first is British Telecom. I use them for telephone and broadband and for the most part I'm quite happy with them. However, I can't just have broadband, I have to have BT Sports. The chances of me watching BT Sports are zero for two reasons. The first is I have no interest in any sports whatsoever. And the second is that I would have to buy (or subscribe to) things I haven't got in order to get BT Sports. I realise there is no such thing as a free lunch but I feel I am being charged for a lunch which I can't have and which I'd be allergic to if it were served!
And then there's Amazon. For years I have subscribed to Amazon Prime. I find it very convenient as I to buy a lot of stuff on line rather than making a twenty five mile round trip to a shopping area so buying a "free" posting package made sense. However, shortly after I paid my subscription last year Amazon announced that Prime would include "free" Amazon Prime Instant Video. I have really struggled to find something I want to watch and in a whole year I have watched two videos! Although this service is "free" my subscription has gone up from £49 to £79 - or it would if I renewed it. I've decided to forget it for a while and see whether it would be worthwhile. That may have the even better effect of stopping me shopping with them so much!
Hmmm. Maybe I am glad about the changes to Amazon Prime!
Paying much more for videos that you don't watch sounds like a bad deal :(
ReplyDeleteYou are right -- no free lunches in life. I buy a lot from Amazon as I don't shop in stores much either. However, we have never subscribed to Amazon Prime and probably never will. That was a huge jump in fees so those videos are definitely not free. I have heard about people not liking BT but it is the same here with our telephone services. We have our phone/internet/cable all with our cable company and when Hubs retired three years ago, we cut our cable services drastically. We bought a Roku and now stream Netflix and Acorn. We watch Acorn all the time because it seems the only thing worth watching is the British offerings and we don't get much of that on regular television since BBCAmerica has been having it's love affair with that screaming chef and Top Gear. That is all that is on BBCA here -- so we watch Acorn and the Roku was a great investment.
ReplyDeleteWe are with BT and opted to have BT Sport as it is free if you are already a customer. We don't watch much sport but DB likes the occasional German football match.
ReplyDeleteMy problem with BT is that if you are a customer you get charged for sports whether you want it or not! They say it's free but when it was introduced as a freebie it was at the same time as a VERY large price hike. It is the claim that something is free when really all it is that you have to pay for it whether you want it or not that I object to.
DeleteI agree -- our cable services are similar -- they come in packages, you can't buy things separately like if you only want certain channels you can't pick and choose individually, just packages and in every package there is stuff you don't want -- lots of foreign language channels come to mind -- but you can't get rid of it. I think it is all a rip - off and the whole thing should be reconfigured but it is all about the dollar/pound, isn't it?
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