Saving Money on My Cable and Phone Bills
About four weeks ago, I was rounding up my expenses for the month of February and tallying up how much my wife and I had saved for the month. We wound up saving about 9% of our after-tax income. Not too shabby, considering the national average is around 4%. Ever the optimist, I tried to figure out ways we could save even more, and I remembered a great idea.
Were there any unnecessary expenses we could cut down on? Perhaps. But before asking ourselves to sacrifice, why not ask the people that we were paying to sacrifice instead?
I’ve done this a few times in the past. Most of the time, simply calling up a service provider of yours and asking them for a discount on your monthly bill will work small wonders. The key is to be well prepared in order to make the discount seem as natural as possible to your provider.
I targeted my cable company and phone company.
Every few weeks, I would receive an offer in the mail for cable service that seemed, at face value, to be a better deal than the one I had. $74 per month for cable, phone, and internet. We were paying $60 for cable alone! In actuality, the deal wasn’t as good as it seemed after extra fees plus a lack of cable channels were factored in. This didn’t matter though. All I needed to do was convince the service rep that I believed the deal was better. I called up Time Warner cable and told them about the competitor’s deal.
Me: Hi, I’m calling about a competing deal I received in the mail. RCN is offering $74 per month for cable, phone, and internet. Their cable package alone is much cheaper than my current one. Can you guys make me a comparable offer on my cable bill?
Rep: It looks like you already have one of our best base packages, sir. If you had a higher package, we would be able to help, but I’m afraid there’s nothing we can do.
I had to turn up the heat!
Me: Well, if you cannot give me a better deal, I’ll have no choice but to switch services to your competitor.
Rep: …Please hold for moment, sir.
That got the ball rolling. After being put on hold, I was offered $5 off my monthly bill plus a load of extra channels that we didn’t currently have. Not as good as I expected, but I took the offer, sensing it was all they would give me. The $5 amounts to almost 10% off of our $60 bill, not to mention the fact that I can watch Meerkat Manor all I want now.
After the cable company, I searched the Internet for offers from phone companies and played the same game with Verizon. When their rep sensed I had done a little work, he capitulated rather easily. $15 off of our $85 bill. I took the 17% discount and went on my way.
These figures may seems small, but as I wrote in another post, even small discounts can make a big difference in savings. We saved 9% of our after-tax income in February. If we were able to get, say, 10% discounts on all our expenses comparable to these two (a tall order to be sure), we’d be doubling the amount we could save every month.
As I mentioned when I wrote about getting $500 off of my rent, doing your homework will go a long way toward being taken seriously by the opposite party, and simply making it natural for them to capitulate to your requests. Now go get some discounts! If you like, you can even try to play the “bad economy card” in conjunction with doing your homework. “Times are tough and I don’t know if I’ll have my job for long.” This may give you some added leverage in getting that discount.
