Tuesday, October 28, 2008

Turns out...I've been robbed!!!

As you know from reading my blog, I have become quite conscious of our family spending and for that matter, our family savings. I am proud to say that we have not only been writing down all of our spending, which has indeed led to less spending, but we also evaluated our monthly expenses (bills, etc). In doing so, I realized that we do not have too much wiggle room. We already cut off our home phone, which is now saving us $20/month :) I have to give a shout out to my cousin Lisa, who after reading my blog, decided to do the same - WAHOO! So, other than my gym membership (aka: my sanity!) and satellite TV our expenses are not ours to change. With that in mind, I decided to get to work and see what I could do to lower our monthly satellite bill. I researched the competition and called our current provider. I told them that I was quite happy with my service and had no complaints; however I could sign up with their competitor and reduce my monthly bill from $70 to only $30. Much to my surprise, the customer service rep did not hesitate at all. Within seconds, he was taking charges off my monthly bill, such as a service charge and protection plan charge. In less than 5 minutes, he had lowered my monthly payment to $50. Even with these reduced charges, he explained to me that I would still receive the SAME service and SAME protection plan. At first, I was excited about my new savings. But then it hit me…WHAT?!?! You’ve been charging me these fees EVERY month for 2 years and all it took was a simple phone call and a threat of discontinuing my service, for you to reduce my charges! Are you kidding!?!?! What kind of robbery is this? I thanked the customer service rep and told him I would call back once I decided whether to take this offer or switch to the other company. So, now I ponder…do I stay with this company which has ROBBED me and will continue to charge me more per month than the competition, or switch to their competitor, who will most likely end up robbing me too…but in the meantime, I’ll be paying $15 less every month?

1 comments:

staci said...

As long as you acknowledge that any cable/satellite company is going to try and rob you somehow. Be sure to do plenty of research and ask around before switching your plan. Aleks and I recently switched from Comcast to Verizon FiOS. The plans were almost the same in price, some differences in the packages, but the biggest change for us was the menu system - the cable guide, and recording options. Maybe i'm a total geek and only notice this because I spend my days evaluating the usability of so many websites and applications. But, if I had known what Verizon was like ahead of time, we might still be using Comcast. Just a thought. Ask around and get feedback from people in your area using the other service. Good luck! And congrats on being so $$ conscious! You rock! ..and your kids will too.

 
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