I can’t remember if I shared this on my blog, but I was recently a member of a really cool Leadership Academy program. During the course of the program, I was able to take full-day classes with professors from my school’s MBA program.
One of my favorites was a class on negotiations – the professor was engaging and the information she gave us could be used in our everyday lives. I walked away from that class with the phrase, “basically everything is negotiable” floating around in my head.
A couple weeks ago, I decided to test that idea out for myself.
I made a list of our monthly contract expenses. Here are our top four:
- Tivo DVR subscription
- Vehicle insurance – 4 vehicles
- Cable, internet and phone plan
- Cellphone plan – 3 phones
Tivo DVR
I called up the main Tivo customer service line and I asked to please speak to a customer retention specialist. Once I got someone on the line, this is exactly what I said:
“I LOVE Tivo! Love, love, LOVE Tivo. However, my cable company is offering a much better rate if I switch to their DVR. I’ve been a Tivo customer for a long time though, so I wanted to see if you could give me a better offer so that I can stay with you.”
That’s it.
I said that and then I just waited.
The very nice representative looked up my account and said that she could definitely find me a better rate. She threw a few numbers out at me and I said (VERY NICELY) that I was looking for something a bit lower, please. Once she came up with what I thought was her best offer, I waited for a few seconds and asked her (once again… very nicely) if that was the best offer she could do. She paused and then gave me an extra month for free.
I wasn’t mean or bitchy. I didn’t threaten them that I would take my business away and go to the competition. I made myself her teammate by telling her how much I already loved her service and I’d be really sad if I couldn’t keep it. She WANTED to help me. And she did. That one call – which probably took less than 15 minutes of my time – saved me $10.04 each month. Now, $10 a month doesn’t SOUND like much… but think about the fact that it will end up saving me $120.48 each year (+ a free month)!
Vehicle Insurance
After my success with Tivo, I decided to give our insurance company a call. We’ve had our four vehicles insured with them for the last few years and I was really happy with their service. I didn’t WANT to go to another insurance company, but I wanted to make sure I was getting the best rate… so I decided to tell them exactly that.
Once again, I asked for the representative’s help. I said that I’d love to stay with their company, however I thought it would be a good idea to shop around to ensure that I’m getting the best rate. Before I proceeded though, I wanted to check with them to make sure my plan was as competitive as possible. Within about 20 minutes, we reviewed my entire plan over the phone and cut some totally insignificant ‘fat’ from the bill. She updated my policy and emailed me the new forms by the end of the day and our new policy saves us $15.96 each month ($191.52 each year).
Cable, internet & phone plan
Our cable carrier was a bit trickier, because I had to wait until my contract expired in order to negotiate with them. However, they bill a month in advance, so my February bill was WAY higher than my contracted January bill. I waited until the day after my contract was up and called them with my now familiar request to help me stay with them.
Not only did they offer me a much less expensive plan that contained EXACTLY the same service, but they allowed me to backdate it a month and refunded me the difference. This call saved me $50.50 each month, which is $606.00 annually.
Cellphone plan – 3 phones
I figured I’d be out of luck when I went to call our cellphone company, because we added my brother on to our plan less than 6 months ago. In the past, that was the perfect excuse for them to say we were locked into a contract for 10 billion years and would have to wait until then to renew our contract at a different rate.
Well, apparently the times are changing because I didn’t even have to call them. I used their ‘instant chat’ feature on their website to have someone look at my plan and suggest ways for me to save some money. As luck would have it, they had just started a new data special a few days earlier that saved us $113.30 a month ($1,359.60 a year)!
It sounds easy, right? Well, it was!
I’m totally kicking myself on not making these calls earlier. I spent less than an hour total on the phone (or computer) and saved $189.80 off of our monthly bills.
That is almost $200 that we can add in to our current truck payment to get that thing paid off sooner. OR, if I stuck that savings in a special account… that would be $2,277.60 that we could use for a vacation to somewhere beachy!
I guess it doesn’t really matter WHAT we do with the money we are saving, it’s just nice to NOT be throwing it away when I’m getting the exact same services for less.
I always thought it took a lot of time and effort to do something like this.
In reality, all I did was ASK!
You know what? These customer service people are just people like you and me doing their job. If you speak nicely and treat them with respect, they WANT to help you. They have the POWER to help you. Use your magic words – say please and thank you. Use your ‘talking to grandma’ voice and ask them if that is the best offer they have for you.
It doesn’t hurt, I swear!
I want you to know that you can do this too. Pick one of your monthly bills and call the company to see if they can give you a better deal. Commit less than 10 minutes to do this… that’s doable, right? Then, stop back by and leave me a comment below and tell me how it went for you. I would love it if someone can top my $2,277.60 savings!
Okay, this is awesome. I may have to give this a shot!
Do it!!! It’s easy and everyone likes saving money! 🙂
I totally have to have this conversation with my cellphone provider. I’ve been with them for over 11 years and honestly i haven’t changed my plan in about 6 because i know if I change it I will never be able to go back (and honestly i have a package that doesn’t exist anymore). But honestly I don’t have as much data as I would like and the fact that other companies are starting to release packages with unlimited local minutes I think it’s time to negotiate. When my contract is up of course. Which isn’t till next year 🙁
Call them anyways and ask — the worst that can happen is that they say you have to wait! I thought I’d be stuck with my cellphone too and was pleasantly surprised. =)
As a customer service person, THANK YOU for being nice to these people! I do phone customer service for Ann Taylor/LOFT and you wouldn’t believe the amount of people that feel they have to scream and swear to get assistance. Most (though not all) companies allow the representative some “personal” discretion. That means that you should treat the representative like a PERSON! People seriously don’t get this. Have I given people freebies cause they were nice? ABOSLUTELY. Are some customer service reps morons, again ABSOLUTELY. But always try to be on the same team.
My husband is really good at doing this. As the executive director of a nonprofit, I’ve recently started asking for lower prices because of our limited budget. Kudos to you for helping to get this information out in the world by writing about your experience. It’s not hard to do-like you said, all you have to do is ask. Most people are really nice about responding to your request. They might not be able to do anything, but at least you asked.
The key is to be nice about it. Nobody likes a meanie who demands something for nothing! =)
Oh my goodness – this is so impressive. We should all be doing this, and what a great first day of “work” if you’ve recently lost your job!
That is an excellent idea, to assign yourself this task when going through a life change. =)
Wow! I totally need to do this. My cell phone plan is crap, I’m paying for only 200MB of data per month, which is nothing. I have to keep my data off at all times or else I’ll go over my limit in about 4 days. I wish I had a cell phone contract that allowed unlimited data!
Try it for yourself — the worst that can happen is you waste a few minutes of your time!
This is such good advice! I’ve done the same thing, but never calculated the annual savings. It really adds up!
Thanks Nikki – there is just something thrilling about adding it all up. And I certainly feel less guilty about my little splurges… =)
This was such a cool post, the title intrigued me, and after reading it, you certainly delivered…
I need to share this with The Hubs and put a game plan together. Stat. I’ve done this in the past and, you’re dead on: It works!
Stopping by from SITS…
Fantastic! Be sure to stop back in and tell me how much you saved! =)
Wow, That is pretty amazing! I’ll have to try it 🙂 Visiting from SITS today 🙂 Happy SITS day!
You make it sound so easy! I need to go through our monthly bills and try this out. Thank you for sharing!
Pretty awesome! Good job…it is sort of scary how much we all are overpaying…Yikes. I better do something about that.
It goes to show you, it never hurts to ask. I think I have some phone calls to make.
Thanks for sharing (and happy belated SITS day).
xoxo