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ASSOCIATION CABLE BILLS?
By
Jan Bergemann
Published February 21, 2020
No matter how much
the association is charging you monthly for the bulk cable
contract, you’re most likely paying too much.
Today’s technology
has clearly outlived bulk cable contract. Today’s technology
with Wi-Fi and streaming videos and TV-Channels creates much
better – and less cheaper offers than any of bulk cable
contracts association boards are still signing with cable
contracts.
These cable
contracts leave owners with no choices. Owners are often forced
to pay for something they don’t even want – or no longer use.
Many condos and HOAs
are still dealing with old contracts that are often outrageous
expensive and/or offering little choices for the individual
taste.
Get high-speed
Internet, a smart TV and an Amazon Fire TV stick and you can’t
watch all the channels and movies you can watch for much less
money than you pay for a cable contract – even if the
association had gotten a much better monthly charge than an
individual owner could ever get. My personal example: My wife
paid in her home (HOA in Pompano Beach) nearly $100 more than we
pay here in our home in Deland (no cable contract). We have here
very high-speed Internet, telephone with free calls to USA,
Mexico and Canada and more TV and movie channels than we can
ever watch, including my favorites: German TV and European
soccer from all Leagues, something we could only dream of in our
HOA home in Pompano.
Why are association
boards are still fighting with owners about bulk cable
contracts? Cable contracts are about as outdated as 45rpm
records.
I just wish that
association boards would stop signing these idiotic contracts,
or just refuse to renew them once the existing contract reaches
the end of the term. Today’s technology offers much better – and
much less expensive -- options.
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Jan Bergemann is president of Cyber Citizens For Justice,
Florida
's largest state-wide property owners' advocacy group.
CCFJ works on legislation to help owners living in
community
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associations. He moved to
Florida
in 1995 - hoping to retire. He moved into a HOA, where the
developer cheated the homeowners and used the association dues
for his own purposes. End of retirement!
CCFJ was born in the year 2000, when some owners met in
Tallahassee
- finding out that power is only in numbers. Bergemann was a
member of Governor Jeb Bush's HOA Task force in 2003/2004.
The organization has two websites to inform interested
Florida
homeowners and condo owners:
News Website: http://www.ccfj.net/.
Educational Website: http://www.ccfjfoundation.net/.
We think that only owners can really represent owners, since all
service providers surely have a different interest! We are
trying to create owner-friendly laws, but the best laws are
useless without enforcement. And enforcement is totally lacking
in
Florida
!
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