Attempt at cutting the cord doesn’t quite go as planned

Aaaaaaaaaaaaand I was all ready to do it. I was ready to join the 21st century and stop being a boomer and pull the plug.

I was going to cancel my cable subscription with Comcast.

Sound the trumpets!

My plan was simple enough, and rationale was airtight:

I finally got a “smart” TV for the living room.

With that new item in place, I was loaded up with Netflix and HBO Max and Apple TV and Disney+ and Hulu and I was only paying for one of them thanks to password sharing among members of my family.

I had a landline with Comcast, but we literally don’t have a landline phone.

Add in the cost of our internet service, and our family paying $226 aa month for all of this.

Then I saw T-Mobile was offering home internet for $50 a month, and I could get YouTube TV for like $75 a month, and all of a sudden I could save $100 a month without skipping a beat and I was like, “Let’s do it!”

I felt so adult. I felt so smart. I felt so empowered.

So I went out and picked up the T-Mobile … well, it’s not a modem. Is it a modem? They call it a gateway, and it’s based on 5G signals, not a cable line (duh), and I plugged it in and fired it up and … while I could connect, I couldn’t get the internet. That was not good.

So I called customer service, and they walked me through the setup, and I did everything they said, and I fired it up and … no internet.

The customer service representative was flummoxed. I hung up angrily, which is difficult to do on a non-landline phone. Can’t effectively slam it.

Well, now I figured I’d have to return the T-Mobile thingee and get another one. I figured it must have been defective in some way.

So I took it back to the T-Mobile store at Nassau Park near my home in New Jersey. I was told that location couldn’t accept returns and that I had to take it to the Quakerbridge Mall store.

I went to the Quakerbridge Mall store where I was told … I had to return it to the Nassau Park store.

I was now, once again, angry, with no landline phone in sight to slam.

In the end — and it’s not over, yet — I was told I would be getting a call on Sept. 16 in which I would be told how, exactly, I could return the gateway thing. It’s currently in my trunk.

Well. I seemed to be at a dead end, so I threw a Hail Mary at Comcast.

I called the company’s customer service line and said I was canceling (even though I wasn’t, at least not yet) and within 10 minutes of that, I was transferred to someone in “customer solutions,” where I was asked what, exactly, I wanted.

I wanted internet. I wanted sports channels. I wanted to pay for HBO Max. I didn’t want a landline.

And wouldn’t you know, two minutes later, the guy offers me everything I want for $10 more a month that I was going to pay for T-Mobile and YouTube TV.

As you might imagine, I took the offer.

Now instead of paying $1,200 more a year, I’m paying $120.

Moral of the story: It pays to ask.

Also: Even if you don’t have a landline, it’s worth keeping an old school phone around the house in case you feel the need to angrily slam it. Honestly, that’s the biggest takeaway here.