Perpetual Ruminations

Buncoed

I suppose I'm venting this out, but yes, I feel I'm being buncoed. Bunco or it's alternate spelling, Bunko is a nice colorful word we seldom hear anymore, but it does fit the situation. Maybe in times past I could call the Bunco Squad, but I doubt they could actually do anything about this particular rip off. Nonetheless, I feel I'm currently being buncoed by my internet provider.

I live in a very small town in a rural area, so there is no competition to our one and only internet provider, the phone company. Actually, it is a cooperative, so one would think it would be reasonably priced, possibly even cheaper than other services. That's not the case, however. Because of the rural location, the actual phone service is very limited, even though they advertise unlimited local calling. The term local is key here to mean anyone in our relatively small community. To access other areas close by, one must pay an access charge for each neighboring town or pay local long distance charges, which cost even more. This results in phone services that cost more than using a cell phone, but with much restricted calling.

They also offer high speed internet with ranges from the lowest speeds at $40.00 up to the highest speed at $90.00, with a few packages in between; this does not include special fees and taxes, just the basic internet fee. In order to stream movies, we needed to go with the second package which costs $45.00 a month and is barely enough to stream without interruptions. But, coupled with the phone service it was costing us almost $100.00 a month, and that was with no additional calling packages or long distance.

Since we use cell phones and have a mobile home phone that allows unlimited nation wide calling for $15.00 a month, I talked to the cooperative about disconnecting our land line but still keeping the internet. This was possible, but they charged an additional $5.00 for the service if it wasn't coupled to a phone. I was fine with that and for a few months everything was peachy-keen.

But, starting last month, they changed the access to $35.00 for internet without a phone. Now, phone service for local calling runs about $23.00 a month. However, there are all sorts of other fees that go along with having the phone so it averages out to... you guessed it, about $35.00 a month. Of course these prices do not include any taxes or the extra fees for 911 access and such. A summary of charges then is about $80.00 a month for phone and internet; add taxes and other fees, it's just shy of $100.00 per month. Compare now to just internet access plus the line access fee and it costs $80.00 a month; add taxes and fees again and it's just shy of $100.00 a month.

To me that's a rip off, I now have to pay the same amount for just internet as I would if I coupled it with a relatively worthless landline, $100.00 a month. Twenty miles from here, my brother has faster and better internet service for less than $40.00 a month.

What are my options? I purchased a mobile hot-spot and set it up, but it's looking like it will cost about the same for enough data to do the things we do now. Another option is HughesNet, but again, they don't offer enogh monthly data for our needs unless we pay extra. It looks like for now we are stuck, if we want internet we have to pay over twice as much just because there are no competitions to the cooperatives services, and to me, that's the definition of buncoed.