this post was submitted on 06 Jan 2024

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[LPT] Call and threaten to cancel your subscription services once a year; their retention department will give you a better rate (lemmy.ca)

submitted 11 months ago by [email protected] to c/lifeprotips

15 comments fedilink hide all child comments

This only works by phone. Be nice, but firm. Don’t be satisfied with their first answer – make them escalate you to the retention department. They’re often authorised to give much larger discounts because it’s cheaper for them to retain customers than to recruit new ones.

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[+] the_q 10 points 11 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (1 children)

[deleted]

[–] [email protected] 8 points 11 months ago (3 children)

Sure, but that doesn’t work so well with ISPs or cell service.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 11 months ago (1 children)

If you're not grandfathered into a sweet rate on a major mobile carrier you can potentially save a ton of money by going pre-paid. I've been using www.usmobile.com which is $30/mo for 35gb of prioritized verizon or t-mobile data ($25/mo with multiple lines). If you don't use much data you can do $10/mo for 2gb.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 11 months ago

Great tip, thank you.

[–] stevedidWHAT 0 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Yeah so just increase call center volume so you can have a discount because you feel like you deserve one I guess. Surely the subscription giants will just take this in stride and not use this as ammo to raise prices.

Makes sense.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 11 months ago (1 children)

It does actually work and I’m sorry, but I don’t have that much sympathy for Comcast.

[–] stevedidWHAT 1 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (1 children)

Fuck that, instead have some sympathy for the people that work under their boot to feed their families.

Not everything is black and white, I don’t think I should have to tell you that.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (1 children)

I don’t get why you’re so angry about this, but I’m interested to know what’s so wrong about my tip.

This came from a conversation I had about how back in the day, we were bombarded from all sides with advertising that encouraged us to call and cancel our services, with targeted ads and in-person door-to-door salespeople offering deals if we switched services at least once a year.

It dawned on me that most of us ad block now, and we don’t get the constant reminders about our subscription fees, so we’ve seen shocking levels of price drift. We aren’t prompted to constantly compare our fees with competitors (when was the last time someone came to your door to encourage you to cancel?), and services take advantage of that by hiking prices by a small amount year on year hoping you won’t notice. And many of us don’t.

So I’m your reminder instead. They have discounts they won’t tell you about unless you ask them, and this tip is no different from the reminders we used to get from their competitors, but slightly less in-your-face, and I’m not getting paid for it.

eta: those people working under the boot get paid the same regardless of the call, it’s not like your discount comes from their paycheck. If anything, you’re justifying their job by calling. That’s a really weird argument. I did say be nice and respectful. Don’t be a Karen about it.

[–] stevedidWHAT 2 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Not mad, but I can see how you could see that from my choice language that day.

I just think that we have to call and even ask for this stuff is only enabling the problem. For me, when Netflix and all these other guys price hike, drop content, don’t give advertised streaming qualities and all of that, I dropped all of them. Now I pirate stuff again, I send YouTubers donations and use 3rd party apps to get around ads, etc.

Consumers are brainwashed into thinking they have to do all this hoop jumping just to get a fair shake and it’s just not the case. Ultimately either scenario is fine, I was being a bit dramatic about the whole thing frankly. These people have options to work at other places in theory, and call center work or anything really that’s high touch with disgruntled people or other abusive circumstances should be done away with entirely. I find it frankly pretty gross that we subject ourselves to abuse just to be able to afford to eat and live anywhere half comfortable.

Thanks for keeping things civil with me, I appreciate it.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago)

For me, when Netflix and all these other guys price hike, drop content, don’t give advertised streaming qualities and all of that, I dropped all of them.

Right, and I’m saying instead of just silently dropping them, call first and tell them you’re going to drop them. See what deal they’re willing to give you. Then drop them if you’d like, but it’s worth asking.

Obviously financial protest is useful against corporations, and some of us can protest more effectively given our nation/position/understanding. I do what I can.

e: Thank you for your civility, too. I appreciate that we have that here. Cheers.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 11 months ago

I've done this with SiriusXM. I bought a car, and I got a 6 month free trial. I kind of liked it, but not $24.95 a month worth. I called to cancel, and they gave me a much better price for 6 months. I went on my calendar, went forward 6 months, backed up 1 day, and put an entry to remind me to call back. 6 months later I called to cancel and got an even better price for a year. Did the same thing a year later, and got the same rate. The last time I called, they gave me a rate of just over $6 a month for good, so I don't have to keep calling and negotiating. I know people hate on SiriusXM, but I absolutely get $6 worth of listening out of it every month.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 11 months ago

Plan to do this soon with my only credit card that has an annual fee.

[–] stevedidWHAT 1 points 11 months ago

Who knew this was actually Karen protips