livingcheaply

My last post on phone lines got me thinking about the sneaky little “money saving” offers that the phone and cable companies use to get you to cough up more cash than you need to. The ubiquitous bundle is in most cases just an up-sell that only sucks money out of your pockets.

Think about it. If you want voice mail on your home phone (which you should consider ditching anyway) it costs $8 or $10 a month. But when you bundle it with other services, the cost plummets to $4-$6 a month. What a deal. But think about it, to get the lowest rates you also have to sign up for caller ID, call waiting, call forwarding, call blocking and who knows what else.

Now you have spent more than just the voice mail at full price. But you have all of these extra features to use now, and almost for free. Or so goes the argument. A better idea is just buy an inexpensive answering machine and forget the bundled services. It will pay for itself in a few months and then you are making money with it, because a penny saved is indeed a penny earned.

Same thing with cable. Do you really need all of those 80 gazillion add on channels, or can you get by with just basic cable. Do you spend that much time watching television that fifteen premium movie channels make sense?

Bundling can work when you want to get several different services from one provider, like cable, internet, phone and even cell phone. Then it makes sense, but beware the bundle that is really just an unneeded up-sell.

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