A win-win solution?
Welcome to the third and final part of our series (Part-3) on how to negotiate cheapest Cable, Phone, and Internet Service Rates. If you somehow missed Part-1 or Part-2 you can check them out here and here.
Time to Regroup
As you’ve seen I did get to the $15 off per month mark, but that is a little short of my goal. I would like to roll the dice again to see if I can get a nicer “retention specialist” who will work with me a little bit. I’ve reviewed the first two videos and watched for the mistakes I made. I’m pretty confident with my refined notes to guide me through the process I will be able to meet my goal of $45/month. Let’s see how I do in the video below!
Woohoo!!! I met and exceed the savings goal that I was looking for. I went from $65/month to $35/month for a annual savings of $360. If you look at the time I took, this is like saving $675/hour!!! I did end up downgrading service from 20Mbps to 6Mbps, but I haven’t noticed any performance issues with this at all. Overall, I am very happy with where things came out. Below, I’ve included some additional bonus negotiations tips and the notes I used going into the negotiation to help me stay on track. Feel free to download this and modify it to help you before you call up your provider(s).
More Bonus Negotiation Tips
- It can work well to use the “higher authority” trick. Example: That sounds great… I’ll just have to check with my wife/husband, hold on a minute… <long pause> Hmm… he/she says that is still too high. What else can we work out?
- Try NOT to ask Yes/No questions. Be vague and use something like: “Gee, we are so close, what else can we do?”
- Make use of the “nibble”. If you reach agreement for a lower price and you have closed the deal, ask them for other small favors afterwards such as: extend the lower pricing for a longer term, refund last month’s difference, refund any change of service fees, etc.
- If you are not happy with the deal you were offered after giving it your best shot, call back and try again with someone completely new if you have the time. If you are determined, sometimes on the fourth or fifth try you will make that breakthrough you’ve been looking for. You’ll see in the third video how this worked for me even though other two guys wouldn’t budge.
- Be aware of diminishing returns. You can usually get a quick $15-$20 off with almost no work. If you are looking for more, be prepared to fight for it and spend more time.
- Make the whole process into a game and see how low you can get them to go. Have fun with it and try not to take it so seriously!!
Just to wrap things up, this whole three part series took me much longer than I thought to compile (probably 12 hours total), but I think you have a very good plan that you can follow to get yourself some big savings in about 15-30 minutes of your time. Please post in the comments if you plan to try this or let us know the results if you were able to negotiate for the cheapest rates!
Click here for notes on negotiating that I used specifically for these calls. You use this as a guide to fill out and use for your own negotiating!!
Nice job Derek. My contract with Verizon is 3 months from ending, looking forward to the negotiations now!
Mike, good luck bargaining your way to a better deal!