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I've been paying $74.99 for my high-speed Internet with TWC. It's always worked really well, and I've had it for years and years. Including when I lived in Florida (Adelphia, I believe, was my ISP down there).

Even though new users can sign up for the same level of service I have for $54.99… (don't get me started…), my cost is apparently $79.99, and I've been paying only $74.99 because I'm in on a special deal.

We pay $31/month for Verizon home phone, and since we've all got cell phones now, I was charged with either ditching the home phone or perhaps trying Time-Warner for our home phone with their VOIP deal.

On the phone, I was told my bill would go up about $4.65 to add unlimited nationwide (including Canada and Puerto Rico) calling, with Privacy Protection (no listing in the phone book, private caller ID). So I signed up.

Today the technician came to the house. He noted that my cable modem was only a DOCSIS 2.0 modem, so I ordered another off Amazon (the Motorola SB6141). It should boost my speeds nicely (Edit: Yeah, I went from 22 Mbps down with 3.7 Mbps up to 32 Mbps down and just over 5 Mbps up).

What's stupid is that the phone service includes a cable modem perfectly capable of running Internet, phone, and TV, and it's sitting in the basement all the same, but because I'm not paying $5.99/month to lease the modem for the Internet, they disable that functionality on the box and I use my modem for the Internet. The cable is physically split and goes into two separate modems. Derrrrr.

Anyway, when I called to complain about the $54.99, I was told I'm paying $10 for the phone, $2.59 or so for the privacy stuff, and $3.50 or so for voicemail. I immediately canceled voicemail, bringing my new bill down to about $0.31 of the old bill… but then asked why I was still paying so much more than the $54.99 available to new customers.

I was told my actual bill would be $79.99/month, and I was getting a "bundle discount" by having the phone.

I'm fairly certain I could fight this. It makes no sense, particularly as a decade-old customer, that I couldn't pay $59.99/month or $54.99/month when new customers get that price. I've set a reminder to call back in a month and complain, and see what sort of plan they can set up for me then.

Oh, and the call quality? It's a bit worse, but we use our land line so infrequently, I don't really care. It's fine. And now we can make long-distance calls without having to worry about our cell phones. I'll pay $0.31/month for that… but any more, and I'm just going land-line-free.

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