> Just how long did you expect to get that discount for?
It's not a discount.
The history is that you paid 40quid for the service and 150quid for a modem + installation to get the service. The 40 quid was reduced to 20quid and then an _option_ to rent a modem for a fiver was added. That was probably the ideal - customer choice - buy or rent [and because people could buy, a 2nd hand market would exist and because you bought you obviously didn't pay the rent too - unless you wanted to, I suppose, I never asked]
So now it's a "discount"? Noo. Perhaps I should nip into comet and give them a fiver for the TV we bought?
How long did I expect to not pay for the CM I already paid for? Err, well, since you ask - for ever and ever.
Just look at ADSL kit - it's not 150 quid. Ergo paying a fiver a month rental [and that's what it was] is, frankly, daft 5 years down the line. I'd have paid for probably 5+ NTL CM's given their bulk purchasing had I opted to rent. Some of you probably have.
NTL have since [for a long time now] merged / fudged what was a 20quid service + 5 quid rental into a single price and at the same time, sadly in my view and experience removed the option to buy [and removed the 2nd hand market]
Folk saying folk like myself have saved 150quid should think about that - I haven't won because you've lost - I did what made perfect sense and it's in the customer's interest to be able to do it. You should all have had that option - and you should all have that option today. The fact you don't is because it makes perfect sense for NTL to take a fiver a month extra potentially for years - because renting makes no sense - OTOH, with a bit of imagination they could probably have kept the purchases and got some to pay 150 quid for their CM, 150quid for a 5 year extended warranty, a fiver a month rental and pick up the tab for the meal to discuss it - but for the rest of us...
I'd save more if I could sell this CM to someone else if I ever move away from a cabled area or switch to another system - that's another reason why it's good and what NTL did by removing the choice was bad.
Renting for a fiver might have been fair enough given the prices back then - at the time when people asked which option they should do, posts generally questioned whether the short / medium term would make a purchased modem obsolete on the network [the earliest models were docsis 1.0 for example - but that hasn't happened yet] but pointed out the short length of time that the modem would be paid for even at 150quid and with few rental benefits [not the least because they pretend it isn't rent now]
Today a fiver is simply paying through the nose - as I said, look at the ADSL kit prices and market to see why [and consider that, the odd promotion aside, they charge a chunk of change ample enough to cover the price of the CM, for new installation anyway, so you've already paid for it before the first months rent-that-isn't-rent-because-we-stopped-calling-it-that leaves your account. Quack quack, waddle, waddle, it's not a duck? It always was
]
So everyone paying the fiver might consider "Perhaps I could have bought a CM if I wanted to" and work out the saving [especially for 2nd user kit] rather than look at it as though a different group has some kind of discount.
Now with this change, I'm going to be paying the fiver for nothing [not that anyone with an NTL CM has gotten much] It's nothing to do with the speed increases. Sure, it's opportunistic of them to do this at the same time and mention it in the same letter, in the hope it will temper the blow [they'd have been better using the obsolete route though IMHO] - but at the end of the day it's no more related to it than adding the teachers.tv station or increasing the phone rental are - it's just a change of service / pricing being done at the same time as bunch of other changes.
The worse thing is, even if I ring and say "Ok, give me your CM then" I'm still being ripped off because their CM wouldn't cost what I'll end up paying a fiver a month for. Precisely because I've had a CM for 4-5 years means I know it's a daft idea to be still paying for it now - and thus even more daft to start paying again for it.
OTOH, it's a good service and yep, they have dropped the price significantly once and increased the speeds twice now [although they have no choice, back in the 40quid / 150quid CM days there was no one else, now there are lots]
But all said and done, it's probably good enough, having had 2mb for a few months, for me to be miffed about this but get over it
I'll probably recoup the fiver by dropping some other part of the service instead. I did wonder when I upgraded online whether it'd be a symptom - at least they got a secretary to type a letter [one that'll be filed away for the day when they "forget" that they offered a "free" [only a fiver a month squire] replacement for future breakages - after all they forgot rent was rent
]
But I think everyone paying a fiver to rent a CM should firstly see that's what it was and imho that's what it still is, irrespective of what they say now - and secondly question, even if that's the choice they'd make - whether it'd be better to be a choice - like it once was.
Just my 2p (or you can rent it for 5p a week if you prefer)