Do yourself a big favor: Pull out your cable or satellite bill. If you see a charge on your bill for a Service Protection Plan or wire coverage plan, call Comcast, Cox, or whoever you have for pay-tv and cancel it immediately. You could save anywhere from $5.00 to as much as $11.00 per month.

The reason, I would argue, is pretty clear: the charge is a total scam. The cable companies are ripping you off, and there is no need to pay this. Ever.

The actual service has been around for decades and is quite common—I sold thousands of them during my decade-plus working in the cable industry. Different companies cover different things with it. Most explain it as an additional plan to protect any inside cable wires in your home that were not installed by your provider or even sometimes installed by them. They will also say it protects problems with your service that are being caused by non-cable company issues and some other strange things. But this is a pure cash cow for cable companies as 99.99% of customers never, ever, use it.

And the fact is most customers would never even sign up, but yet, the charge appears. However, many times it would be given for a month free during the signup process, customers forget about it or don’t even know, and it sits on their account for years. Easy profits for the cable company.

Take a look how Comcast describes it:

“Comcast does not charge for service appointments to repair Comcast-owned facilities or equipment rented to you by Comcast. However, charges may apply for service appointments when the source of your service problem is not Comcast-owned facilities or equipment rented to you by Comcast. For instance, you may incur a charge when a technician visits your home and repairs problems with the In-Home Wiring used with your Xfinity services, or diagnosis a problem with the connection between Customer Equipment and your Xfinity services (terms defined below).

If you subscribe to the Service Protection Plan, you pay a monthly fee and receive protection against charges for service appointments to diagnose and repair installed In-Home Wiring for residential Xfinity TV, Xfinity Internet, or Xfinity Voice services. In addition, the Service Protection Plan covers service appointments to diagnose problems with the connection between your Customer Equipment and your Xfinity services, and for education about your Xfinity TV, Xfinity Internet, or Xfinity Voice services.”

What this charge is really for is for what we used to call at the cable company I worked for “customer education”—aka when you did something wrong on your equipment and you can’t get a picture from your cable service, meaning the provider is requested to come out and service your home. Many times this is something like hitting the wrong input on your TV, disconnecting a wire accidentally, etc.

However, I can tell you a smart customer service rep can tell pretty quickly if it is the cable service or equipment or something else on the customer’s end. I had countless conversations with customers when I did technical support and explained kindly that the service was fine and tried to help with their non-cable issue as best as I could. I almost never had to send a technician out for such things out of thousands of calls I took. I can only think of two occasions out of those thousands of calls where the protection plan covered a possible visit to a customer’s home.

The good news is that Comcast stopped selling it back in mid-2018, but no doubt, there are countless customers who still have it on their bill and other companies still sell it. Time to review your bill, as you could save a few bucks on a service you may never, ever use.

Harry J. Kazianis serves as a senior director at the Center for the National Interest and Executive Editor of their publishing arm, the National Interest. In the past, Harry served as Editor-In-Chief of The Diplomat and was a part of the foreign policy advisory team of U.S. Senator Ted Cruz’s 02016 U.S. Presidential Campaign. His work and ideas have appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, CNN, Fox News, CNBC, USA Today, The Week, The Hill, the American Conservative and many other outlets across the political spectrum. Harry enjoys writing about technology issues and products from a real-world perspective, having previously worked in the telecommunications industry from 2000-2011. You can follow him (or yell at him) on Twitter: @Grecianformula.

Image: Reuters. 

Image: Reuters.