Do I have to pay for my roommate's HD-TV add-ons for the cable bill?

Apparently he hasn't been paying the bill. He is also a close friend and I don't want to cause any trouble. If he's pocketing your money, it is time to think about this statement.

Cable does not equal HDTV. What does the other roomie have to say about this? So the short, emotional outburst of an answer is No, you shouldn't have to pay. Here is the long drawn-out, logical "non-answer": Perhaps he had an expectation that you also would buy an HDTV considering that his old roomies had one of their own. Maybe he is not being as greedy or sneaky as we are painting him to be, but rather, there seems to have been a misunderstanding - a lot of problems among friends and strangers seem to arise this way. I remember offering a friend tickets to a Bryan Adams concert, which I could no longer attend. My friend excitedly said yes. I thought he was going to pay me. He thought the tickets were free. At the end, no one went to the concert (and no one got paid anything, and there are two less friends in the world... sigh). In retrospect, it wasn't his fault at all - it is just that the money issue was never discussed. Should I have brought up the money? Shoud he? Now I know to cover all my bases so that there are no surprises. If you decide that there indeed was a misunderstanding, and this guy truly is a good guy and a good friend, then perhaps you should sit down and figure things out. Come to a compromise. And in the future, never assume anything - always cover your bases!

I wouldn't give him an effin nickel for hdtv. He's already skated by, using 100% of the services while paying 33%. If he wants to hold your money, fine, but I think you're well within your bounds to refuse to pay for something he misled you about. IANAL but I recall there needed to be a "meeting of the minds" for this sort of thing. A regular person isn't going to ask about hdtv if there's no hdtv in the house. That's just stupid. That's like saying you'll pay for the gas used, and then a month later he goes out and buys an SUV and insists that "gas" meant that too. Bullshit. Wrap this up while you can, how you can, and while it's a cable bill. Your "friend" sounds shady as hell if he doesn't even acknowledge the obviousness that a regular person would have no reason to believe hdtv was involved when they agreed to pay for a portion of the cable. Instead he's playing stupid little gotcha! semantic games. Good luck.

Tell him this: It's like the landline phone bill. Everyone splits the bill for the basic phone service, because everyone theoretically gets the benefit of having a phone. Everyone gets the benefit of having basic cable. Now, if I rang my grandmother in the UK and spent an hour and a half on the phone to her, would you expect me to pay for that long-distance call? That's why I want you to pay for the HDTV shows that only you watch.

He told me cable would be $50 for three of us. Yes, I agreed and have been paying $50 a month since I moved in 4 months ago. So, great. But, I didn't know I was paying for HD and additional stuff. He said it was for internet and cable. That's tricky. You agreed to pay an amount and now you don't want to The tricky part is that if he misled you about what the payment was for you might be in the right. You also might have a point if the rate had gone up but it hasn't. From what little I can read of your situation you probably on the wrong side of this argument. And yes, asking him to move his HDTV in the context of this disagreement would be rude. You might want to settle the bill thing before you address the living room usage.

I think we need to know what the $700 is. If it's him taking you and other roomies cut of the cable money and just not paying the bill, then I wouldn't give him another dollar. (I would also be careful about paying the cable company directly, because they might "accidentally" add you to the account and start sending collections after you.)

And geez, try not to be so scornful of HDTV. For one thing, Luddites have never been particularly fun or popular people. Secondly, if you give your room-mate the impression that he's making a stupid or frivolous decision, his likely defensiveness won't aid your conversation.

If it was shut off, then yes, I would probably be pissed that I paid him money that went to whatever he felt like spending it on. I think you should be thinking along the lines of when it will be shut off. There is simply no residential cable company in North America that allows customers to have a $700 balance as a matter of course. That bill, therefore, is screaming to be paid, and it likely won't be long before the services start to get cut off. If the internet is through the cable company, how are you going to come back to us and ask what to do then? But, to your original question: You have an onus to pay the agreed-upon $50 because you agreed to it without doing your due diligence and you created an expectation by paying it for months already. If your friend is a good friend, he'll listen to your concerns and try and help you pay a more realistic share. You can help him do so by having some suggestions ready. Try checking the cable company's website for info about packages, etc... It won't hurt you to know their prices, since you can't really judge their value (or even 1/3 of their value) to you unless you do. And the TV placement issue is just an iteration of the classic 'shared spaces' issue; if any room-mate is monopolizing a shared area of the house, unless they pay the lion's share of rent, should be politely asked to take their activities to another room once in a while. I'd like to close by saying that if you can't talk to one another about the living arrangements, you can't live together. If it's really the case that you're the one looking to talk and he's acting like a two-year old and dodging things, then you need to just be firm, make and explain your decision, and stick to it until he comes to you prepared to talk.

Jeez, just pay 1/3 of the cable bill. How much more is it per month, $5, $10, $16.66 dollars? It sounds like you agreed up front to pay your portion of "the cable bill" without finding out the details. Seriously, do you never watch any HD cable? Do you quickly skip all through the HD channels when channel surfing, making sure you don't accidentally watch any HD content? I don't have an HDTV and never have. The TV in the living room is an HDTV, but he's in there about 4-5 hours a night after work watching television... so I never use the TV. I do remember once I was watching a show and he came in and asked me why I wasn't watching it in HD and I told him I didn't really care to. Then he flipped the channels up to like 700 or something where apparently all the HD channels are. So, no even if I watch TV in the living room, no, i am never scanning in the 700s. And as someone on a tight budget, I really just don't want to be paying extra for anything - especially something I don't use or have access to.