The Windstream / DISH Saga

I don’t know about you, but we don’t enjoy spending more money than we need to.  Recently (after yet another rate increase notice – the 2nd this year) we finally got fed up with Time Warner and decided to make a switch.  We were paying around $150 a month for our cable and Internet service through Time Warner… and that’s without any premium channels (HBO, Cinemax, etc.)  Oh yeah, throw in another $15 a month for Vonage and we’re talking well over $175 a month for hundreds of channels that we never watched, and sub-standard (at best) Internet service.

Unfortunately, living in our areas there aren’t all that many options, but The Wife did the research and found Windstream which offers Internet, home phone and cable (through DISH) for FAR less than Time Warner.  On top of that they were offering a “lifetime price guarantee” which we know most likely isn’t actually that but it sounds good.  To make a long story short, we’re going to save nearly $1,000 a year.  Nice.

So the one thing that I requested when all of this was going down was to have my own DVR in my man cave (basement).  As you can imagine, I have considerably different tastes in television and movies from the Wife and boys so I didn’t think that was too much to ask.

I came home one day and it was all taken care of.  No more Time Warner boxes, brand new DISH boxes and a new home phone number.  Everything seemed good until ya know… I turned it on.  Low definition.  Oh yeah, and I didn’t have a DVR.  I was sharing the signal with the upstairs TV and I when that unit changed channels, so did mine.  Not good.

After about a week or so we got it all straightened out and I’ve got glorious HD in my basement with my very own DVR.  Not to mention we’re getting 3 free months of all kinds of movie channels which is super cool.  Good riddance Time Warner… I can’t say that I’ll miss you.