Community Phone

When was the last time you looked at how much youre paying for your home service subscriptions?Most people sign up for monthly subscription services like cable, internet, home phone, and cell phone,and rarely revisit them to see whether they could be paying less, or which of these services theyre actually using.Home service companies use several tactics to take advantage of customers.First, they often offer inexpensive introductory rates for services and increase the price after thefirst year.  This gets customers signed up before the price shoots up to the normal rate when they arent monitoringthe bill.Second, they often require customers to bundle services. There might be an excellent deal on home phoneservice, but to get it, you must sign up for a service youre not using (like internet).Third, service providers will sell high margin, add-on products that customers are unlikely to use, increasing the total price of the service.This is especially true with cell phone providers, who will try to get customers who usually use verylittle data onto expensive unlimited data plans.Here are two steps you can take to get your home services under control.Start by auditing your subscriptions, looking at every service youre paying for, and asking yourself two questions: How much am I using this service? Does the price Im paying line up with how much Im using it?If you dont feel youre getting enough value out of a particular service, consider alternative options. You might find better, cheaper options today that werent available when you first signed up.For instance, you could cut the cord with online cable alternatives, like YouTube TV or Hulu Live TV.For home phone services, companies like Community Phone connect your home phone to cell towers rather than copper wire cable, which lets you get out of restrictive home phone contracts, or expensive internet + home phone packages that most traditional providers require.The bottom line is, you could save hundreds of dollars per year just by taking some time to review the subscriptions youre paying for and looking for cheaper alternatives that more closely align with your needs.This article was submitted by James Graham, Founder and CEO of Community Phone, Cambridge Massachusetts