"With Tax, That Comes to $9.99...and $9.99....and $9.99...."

Imagine the following scenario.

You’re standing at the fast food counter, you’ve placed your order and the clerk tells you that your total comes to $7.89.

You pay, take your food and then sit down to enjoy another example of fine American trans-fat free cuisine.

You’ve only taken several bites when someone in a logo emblazoned T shirt appears, pulls your tray out from under you and informs you that in order to get it back, you have to pony up another five bucks.

You pay, whereupon your tray is returned to you.

At least once or twice more during the course of your meal, at random times, you are asked, in mid bite, to cough up another buck or two. Your instinct, of course, is to protest, but a quick glance around the splendor of the clown themed dining room tells you that everyone is in the same boat, so you grumble and you grimace, but you fork it over.

Oh, pish tosh, you say, enough of this silly scenario… that would never happen.

What kind of fool would do business with someone who did business like that?

Turns out…
You and me.

Assuming, of course, that, like me, you have cable.

We pay a monthly fee (excessive, to be sure, but that’s another time and another blog) for the “privilege” of having hundreds of hours of programming pumped into our home.

And put aside the fact that we can’t even order the combo we want. We have to order the combos that are available. (“…Uh, no, sorry, you can’t get just the ten or so channels you really care about, you have to get, and pay for, seventy one other channels that you’ll never spend more than a moment surfing through…”).

Then, there are the commercials.

Admittedly, many cable channels are commercial free.

Like HBO and Showtime, among others.

Though commercial free is a relative and misleading term because even these channels do commercials for their own product.

Oh, and these channels are also “premium channels”.

Meaning you want em, they cost extra, (“…Oh…you wanted KETCHUP with your fries…that’ll be extra….”)

Okay. So now you’ve paid for your cable twice, if not three times.

The original monthly fee.
The “premium” channel fee.
And the third?

Well, let’s be generous and ignore the fact that HBO and Showtime, et al, do their own commercials.

There is yet an insidious little “fee” that I could easily persuade the judge of all things television constitutes a third charge.

The infamous, and more and more commonly seen, pop-up.

“Whatcha you mean, Willis?…Pop ups are those annoying little interruptions of my day on the PC, not the TV!”

Guess again, gang.

Dozens of channels do it, but the world gold medallist at it is TNT.

Check me out when you’re done here, but, for now, just think back.

You’re watching Law and Order.

So far, you’ve only seen the “who got it” segment and the opening credits.

But you think you recognize one of the guest stars and, now, are hooked, because you want to check out the “guest starring” credits after the first commercial break comes and goes.

The first commercial break comes and goes

The program returns.

You resume your interest in who did what to who and will Jack McCoy make the case against them, but moreover, have eyes locked like a laser on the bottom of the screen to see if that guest star is, in fact, the actor you thought you saw in the “who got it” segment.

But, you’re never going to know.

Because you can’t see who that actor is.

Because there is a huge POP UP ADVERTISING the OTHER SHOWS that TNT is hyping at any given time at the bottom of your screen.

And it’s BLOCKING THE OPENING CREDITS of the SHOW YOU’RE WATCHING!

Congrats.

You have now officially paid three times for the same cable.

And you’re not even getting what you paid for.

Imagine reading “The Da Vinci Code” and just as you get to the “oh my, gosh, Jesus was …….” part, you realize that you’re not gonna find out what Jesus was.

Because that paragraph at the bottom of the page is covered up by an ad for Dan Brown’s other book or books.

You’d have that pesky paperback back to Barnes and Noble for a refund in a heartbeat, wouldn’t you?

But we just sit and wait out the hype for “The Closer” or “Raising The Bar” while it gets the hell out of the way of the program that we paid to watch.

I’ve lived long enough to know that nothing can, or will, be done about it.

It’s the Golden Rule.
“He who has the gold, makes the rules.”

And in this case, the cable company has the gold.

And the only way to get it is to play by their rules.

Thing is…I wish every once in a while, they’d send somebody from the cable company by to knock on my door and hold a gun on me while they took my money.

I still wouldn’t be able to see who that guest star was.

But, boy, what a fun story I’d have to tell.