TV MAX Cable: Why they really stink.

If you think you're stuck signing up for them, THINK AGAIN. You do have a few other options, and I suggest you look into them before giving this company any of your money.

Want a few reasons why TV MAX cable sucks? Well:

• PRICE - They're far from a deal. For my complex, they currently charge $38.95 a month for what they call "Basic Analog Service". What's that? Your local stations, and basic cable. Basic is an understatement. It's 63 channels, which includes a few spanish channels. They even dropped the Disney Channel in favor of The Hallmark Channel, because, they said, they "already had too many children's channels!" Uhh. whatever.

  If you want to add HBO, Showtime, or The Movie Channel to this, that's another $12.00 for one of them, or the bargain price of $22.00 for two! Want all three? That'll kick it up to $31.00. And it's not like it's all the HBo's or multiple Showtimes. You get just one channel. So if you get all the stuff, TV MAX is going to set you back $69.95 per month, not including taxes and such.

  For comparison, DirecTV offers the basic package at $33.95 a month, and that's including more channels in the basic package than TV MAX does, plus Pay-per-view, the music, etc. etc. The FCC requires that your apartment let you have a satelite dish, with some restrictions. Check out this for more information, or talk to the FCC.

• SERVICE - TV MAX doesn't have very good customer service. Many a time, our cable has had extended outages. (I consider extended anything over an hour.) Since I work from home, I notice when the TV goes out more often than when someone who doesn't work from home does. It's usually during the day. When I call TV MAX to complain, they always say they know about it, and they're working on it. When I ask TV MAX about a credit for the channels being out, they say that they only do that if the channel is out more than 24 hours. Any less, and TV MAX doesn't give you squat. (Oh, and if it is out more than 24 hours, TV MAX credits your bill 5 cents per channel per day. WOw.) We've had TV MAX for 3 years, and they haven't added ONE channel. I take that back, as I said above, they added The Hallmark Channel, but dropped Disney Channel, so it's a wash.
• QUALITY - TV MAX Cable is sometimes worse than having an antenna hooked up to the TV! Our channels regularly have static (from the TV MAX dish not being pointed to the satelite correctly), to the local channels having terrible static. They obviously don't care for the customer.

Our apartment complex switched owners about a year ago, and the new owners cannot get out of TV MAX. Basically, your apartment complex signs a very long contract with your owners for cable service, and make it impossible to get out. Supposedly, they give 'kick-backs' to the owners for signing up with TV MAX. Nice way to do business there, TV MAX.

If this page stops one person from signing up with TV MAX, then great. But heed my advice: AVOID TV MAX! You can get better service from other sources, and avoid any complex that uses TV MAX. It's not worth the hassle.

An Update

Looking at the TV MAX website, though, I still see they service the complex I used to live at, with the same rates, and the same price. Basically, still a ripoff.

I hope people still decide that TVMAX Cable is still a ripoff, and avoid any apartment complex that uses this company. Good luck!