Let the battle for my hard earned dollars... begin!

SureWest, formerly Everest, is moving in to Prairie Village. According to their website, they will be offering their full suite of cable television, internet and telephone services. This is good news, since Time Warner has been our only (non-satellite) choice for as long as I have lived here. I expect the novelty of something new, will be enough to entice some folks to switch. Plus, I'm sure there are plenty of folks that have a beef w/ Time Warner, so they will be chomping at the bit. For me, it's simply a matter of price. I guess it's possible that SureWest will try and severely undercut Time Warner's prices to pick up fence sitting subscribers.

When we lived in Waldo, Time Warner actually went from door to door, offering "special" low rates for current subscribers. Strangely enough, it was the day after Everest announced their arrival Waldo, by putting a hang tag on our door. We decided to make the switch for an assortment of reasons. Mostly, it was out of spite because Time Warner was charging us a fortune, and only budged on prices when there was competition.

For the record, the switch to Everest was somewhat painful. Cable and internet were the easy part, but getting the phone hooked up took 2 days and 3 technicians. But, once up and running, everything was fine. Within a few months, Aquila was looking to move Everest, and as a result, customer service was incredibly hit or miss. I don't recall the exact issue, but I called them one day and spoke to a guy that sounded like he knew it was his last day at work. He apologized for whatever the issue was and "opened up the pipe" on our service, w/o additional charge. I wasn't sure exactly what that meant until a few days later, I stumbled across a channel that featured a rather uninhibited young woman pleasuring two gentlemen. Sweet!!!! Free porn!

Anyway, back to Prairie Village... I don't know that I am looking to switch, but I expect Time Warner is working on a plan as we speak, to encourage existing subscribers to stay put. Of course, price is #1 with a bullet. Here are a few other things that would work for me:

1. More HD content, Food Channel and HGTV don't count, because I didn't drop a boat load of cash on an HD TV to see Paula Dean.
   
2. Update the shitty HD/DVR cable boxes. They crash all the time, and the KU/UNC game I DVR'ed in March, looks and sounds like crap.
   
3. Begin a plan to convert to fiber optic or something else that will increase bandwidth
4. Get rid of all the home shopping channels.

Let the games begin!