Streaming Smarter: Eric G’s Tips for Cutting Costs!

Foreign.

The House with Eric G. Your go to source for everything home improvement.

Whether you're a DIY enthusiast or just looking to make your space shine, Eric.

G. Is here to guide you through.

The latest tips, tricks and trends.

So grab your toolbox, put on your thinking cap and let's get to work right here on around the House with.

Eric G. Welcome to the around the House show, your trusted source for everything about your home.

I'm Eric G. Thank thanks for joining me today.

Happy midweek everybody.

Wow, I can't believe it's already midweek.

We have been rolling through the week this week.

It is busy time of year for us here with our studio build out and all the stuff going on.

Speaking of that, on Saturday here on the 25th at 11am in Portland area, I will be at the West Lynn Park Rose Hardware.

Come say hi to me about 11am somewhere around there.

We'll be doing some stuff there at the store.

It's their 60th anniversary sale and I believe they've got a 20, 20% off sale that day.

So if you were in the Westland, if you're in Oregon City, Lake Oswego, all those different areas around there, that's my little hardware store.

It's not little, it's a former Albertsons.

It's a good sized store, tool rental, the whole thing.

I love working with those guys there.

So take a look, come on down.

I'll be down there hanging out, say hi.

Might even do some recording down there.

So if you want to be part of the show, come say hello.

We're just finalizing those details right now.

That is on Saturday the 25th here of April, 11am West Lynn Parkrose Hardwire I tell you what, I had an interesting day yesterday.

I was in a meeting with Comcast, Xfinity and Xfinity for all you retail people out there.

And they have a new thing for streaming that makes a lot of sense.

And this isn't a paid commercial, but have you ever realized, I don't know how many streaming platforms I have, am I still paying for that?

Am I spending more money?

I should.

They came out with a really great way to put it all in one spot for you to manage it.

Let's run out here and listen to Comcast for a few minutes and let me show you what Xfinity has here that could save you money if you're a streamer and this could save you like 20 or 30%.

So that's a significant savings.

Let's hear what they had to say.

Yeah, no Absolutely.

And this is part of my role here.

And it's been a lot of my time just obsessing about how to make entertainment simpler, smarter, and more affordable for customers.

So that is exactly the type of challenge that we are addressing with.

With the launch of Stream Saver and Stream Store.

As you said, streaming has provided customers a lot more choice, but has also created this more messier household situation where customers have a variety of streaming subscriptions.

I think the average household in the US has around four or five apps right now.

They need to be able to.

They're basically juggling between different app services, different bills, and they often end up paying more.

The price of these streaming subscriptions has gone up significantly over the last couple of years.

Customers are faced with these challenges and what we launched recently with Streamsaver addresses, this Stream Saver is meant to really provide a way for these households to access some of the best streaming services out there with significant savings of up to 45%.

And with the added simplicity of having everything on one bill, the Xfinity.

And on top of this Stream Store is how what makes it easier for the customers to manage.

And we make it easier by allowing them to, in one place, browse, compare, purchase, upgrade, downgrade, and also switch between bundles in a very seamless manner.

So we think with.

And just to summarize, I think it's really about taking something that has become fairly complex, expensive, and making it more affordable, easier, and flexible.

I can relate to that.

I had somebody here about three weeks ago break into an account of one of mine and take my credit card number from their system.

And no big deal.

I had fraud on it.

They took care of it, bank took care of it.

But then I'm like, what was on that card?

What memberships of my streaming services were on there?

Okay.

And so I thought I had them all.

And then I went to go log in and I went, oh, that didn't renew.

Oh, that was on there.

I had no idea without spending hours and hours of my own time to figure out.

Because like most people, I think out there, when you subscribe for something, you grab whatever you've got that's your main at the time.

And having it in one place, to me is very attractive.

And that's what customers tell us.

Often customers think that they're actually paying less than what they actually are because they have.

To your point, they've basically forgotten all of the services they've subscribed to and are probably underestimating or underusing their subscriptions.

And that's also what we're trying to address.

So we want to ensure that customers, that we provide that added value to the customer.

And that's great because yeah, so many people go, they don't even go looking to subscribe.

I think, I think the people I want to watch this series or this show and they go, oh man, you're going to get me for X.

And they sign up and they may never use that for three or four years until something comes on and I've signed on to things and went, I had no idea I was even paying for that.

Right.

It gets lost and just so easy in the mix of life.

Absolutely.

And what we actually do also is that if you paid for a service but are not using it, we actually nudge you and remind you that, that you should activate that service.

Also provides you good reasons to, to start and tune in to one of these services.

Oh, that's so smart because yeah, there's significant money people are spending out there for something that they might not have used a year or two.

And that again comes back to that value that.

Oh wow, okay.

I can sure sign up for this again if I need to.

It's not like you're kicked out of the club here, but why pay for it for a year if you're not going to even sign in?

Use it.

Absolutely.

That is cool.

So is that all just within when you sign on to streaming?

Kind of like and it's just all right there and you pick your choices and it's all in the settings.

So basically we have Stream Store is our digital destination for all of that and it's available both on the web and on the devices.

So what I can do is actually show you what it looks like on the web and just walk you through a bit of the different steps that a customer would go through.

Okay, so I'll, I'll share my screen.

Do you have X1 at home?

Oh yeah, I'm probably a power user.

I've got the two gig up down Internet at the house and then I've got.

I don't pay for a lot of the subscriptions on it, but Yeah, I have X1.

Okay.

So you could just say screen store, India remote to see what it looks like price that John's mentioning.

But then this is how it comes to life on our cine dot com.

Nice.

So if you're going.

If you're a new customer and you want to add some streaming services, this is the experience you would get.

And just to remind you, so Stream Store not only aggregates these new streaming Bundles those, but also aggregates all of the other apps that we have over 350 services that we offer to our customers.

And we want to make them available in one place so customers can easily create their own experience.

And so what we've done with the recently launched Stream Store is really revamp that experience.

So as customers go into our website, they will find this newly designed Stream Store, which just makes it easier to.

We've improved the categorization.

We've just made it a bit more engaging with the content so customers can find the content that they want.

And of course, our new streaming bundles are front and center.

Nice.

A curated number of bundles we think customers will love, but we also have a lot more, as just discussed, to show our customers.

Now, if we dive a bit deeper into streaming bundles, customers can decide to create their own bundle experience.

And they do this by accessing this module here, which allows them to freely select the apps which are important for them.

And what we would then do is basically once they made a selection, you see here, for example, a customer would select Netflix and the Disney and Odoo bundle.

We would then surface the bundles that we think are relevant for them and that they could choose from.

Nice.

You see here that we're making available bundles with premium services.

And I think this is also unique on the market.

We are providing the largest marketplace for premium streaming bundles out there.

Our customers are really delighted to have access to this right now.

So just to continue the journey, suppose the customer would select one of those bundles.

They would then have the opportunity to upgrade specific apps in.

In those.

In.

In that bundle to add free services.

This again is something that our customers have been requesting for quite some time.

And very few services out there can do it in this manner and as seamless as this.

And once they've customized their experience, they basically just add it to the cart and then can start.

I like how you can add.

You don't have to do all of them ad free if you don't want.

Thanks, John.

You guys over there have been really helpful with giving us some hacks on how to save some money and all of that.

For all you people out there that are Xfinity users or you're looking to use their service, it's not a bad way to go.

And that could save you a little bit of money, which I am a fan of.

Now, I wanted to run out here real quick and talk about some of the things that we're seeing in recalls right now.

There are a bunch of them, and sometimes we get into this and it's, oh, there's not much going on, not a big deal.

And then we get into some of these where it's holy smokes, they're everywhere.

And this is one of those they're everywhere weeks.

So what I'm seeing is there is a lot of the Chinese, as I call it, pressure washers that were sold and I tell you what, they were sold online and they've got some serious problems.

I'm not going to try to go through the names, but if I go through here, the big issue is, is they built them without a GFCI posing a serious risk of injury or death since you've got electricity and water playing together.

So I'm looking at here, there's one, there's two, there's three, there's four.

So if you bought one of these five, they keep going six, at least six on here.

If you bought one of these, no name or a name that you've never heard of, you can't even say that is probably on a recall list.

So take a look@cpsc.gov that is one.

It looks like there is a big recall on those.

Now, a lot of these, they didn't sell a ton of these.

That's 80, 100, 200, 500, that kind of thing.

But if you've got one, they want you to not use them and take them back.

The next thing is here that I thought was interesting.

Macy's recalls Arch Studio tea kettles due to risk of serious injury from burn hazard.

Handles can fail.

That can be an issue.

There are power banks.

Casey reannounces recall wireless power banks due to serious injury or death from fire.

There's about almost half a million of those things out there.

So be careful.

Take a look at those.

That's a big one.

Now here's one that's big.

Generic power systems recalls portable generators due to risk of serious injury or death from burn and fire hazards.

When first filling the recall generator with gasoline, fuel can leak from the carburetor, posing a risk of serious injury, death for fire or burn hazard.

So consumers with generators that have previously been filled with enough gasoline to move the gauge off e or have been used without any gasoline leakage can continue to be used.

There's about 150,000 of those and it looks like they are the.

It's called Power Rush Generac.

So take a look at that one more that I saw on here, which was interesting.

And another one for you homeowners out there.

Freestanding professional gas ranges recall due to risk of burn hazard.

Fisher Paykel.

The ovens and ranges can experience a delayed ignition, causing gas to accumulate and the oven door to open from combustion, posing a burn hazard.

So, yeah, that could go boom.

Not a good thing.

There's only about 433 of these things, so they were not a big seller.

But it's a big deal if you have one.

So take a look.

That is our recalls of the day.

Now we've got a great show coming up here.

This is gonna be a lot of fun coming up here next weekend.

This weekend we got a great one, too.

Cause little inside baseball here coming up later today.

I'm doing an interview for a future episode with Dude Dad.

And if you don't know who dude dad is, you'll want to look him up on Facebook.

I'm sure you've seen him if you're a homeowner.

He is out there everywhere.

We're gonna have a little bit of fun there as well.

Great show coming up this weekend.

Make sure you're following us on social media.

We're gonna have some great stuff coming up here as well.

And really we're building out that studio.

I'll probably put a video up on that soon and then a little one here.

We're gonna be putting out a new video in the next, oh, two or three weeks here with Cam Anderson and Blacktail Studios.

As we work through his process.

There are more twists and turns in this that are coming up that you won't want to miss.

So if you're a Blacktail Studio or Blacktail Ranch fan, new video alert will be coming out soon.

We're going to be recording that here this afternoon.

So a little bit of inside baseball for you today on a Wednesday from around the House.

All right, everybody, I gotta run.

I got a busy day ahead.

I'm Eric G. Thanks for tuning into around the House.

We'll see you this weekend.

Thanks for tuning in to the around the House show.

Make sure you subscribe on your favorite way to catch podcasts.

Also, be sure to subscribe to our new YouTube channel and you can find it at around the House HQ and ring that bell for updates.

Thanks for tuning in to around the House.