Dropped $60 on a streaming service bundle and it backfired hard

I thought paying for that big bundle of streaming channels would save me money, like $60 a month for everything. Turns out I only watched two shows on it and spent half the time scrolling through garbage I didn't care about. My wife wanted to watch that new crime drama on one channel, but it was buried behind some weird add-on tier. After three months I realized I burned $180 total on stuff I barely touched. Meanwhile my old basic Netflix subscription had more shows I actually finished in a week. I should have just bought the individual shows I wanted on demand instead. Has anyone else gotten trapped by those cheap bundle deals and regretted it?

2 comments

2 Comments

shane_williams47d ago

Man I was totally one of those bundle defenders but you just woke me up. I did the same thing and realized I was paying for a bunch of channels I never even opened.

jamie_clark6d ago

You're right about most of it, @shane_williams4, but I think you might be off on one small detail. Those channels you never opened? They aren't exactly freebies the cable companies throw in for good measure. Actually, there's a pretty big misconception that bundles are just a way to get more stuff you don't want, when in reality the real money for the networks comes from those very channels nobody watches. Discovery, A&E, all those niche networks bank on being part of the bundle because it guarantees them a cut of every subscriber's bill, whether you tune in or not. So your cable bill is higher, in part, because of channels you might have never even heard of. It's basically a subsidy system where the popular channels carry the unpopular ones on their back.