Monday, October 19, 2009

Piggy Banking Part Deaux



In my previous post on Piggy Banking I shared a few tips that help us stretch our finances and be better stewards of our money. After today's events I wanted to share another little tid bit with you.
Phone service ~ we have both a home phone and a cell phone. However, the home phone is not used near as much as the cell phones are. The fee isn't that bad for the service we have, but since we don't "need" it, I figured the best thing to do for now would be to cancel the service. Well, after calling and talking with them to discuss this matter, I was asked why I wanted to cancel my service. I explained that it is not a service issue it is merely that we are cutting back in areas that we don't really need. With that the rep. gave me an option to lower my monthly bill if I remained a customer. It was a good deal but I really just wanted to cut out that bill entirely. The rep. then offered me something I was not expecting. He gave me 2 months of service for free! Yes, that's right...free!! He said to think about it for awhile and keep my service. In the meantime if I decide later to cancel after my free period was up then there would be no questions asked and they would go ahead and honor my request. However, if I wanted to continue the service that I could ask what the promotional special is at the time and if it interested me I could ask them to give me that promo offer. That's not bad. I wasn't planning on or looking for a deal but the LORD blessed me with this, so I went ahead and took my two months of free service.

Internet (revisited) ~ As I mentioned in the last post, it's always a good idea to check out other providers and see what they have to offer. You can sometimes use that to your advantage. I contacted my internet provider and asked them what would they be willing to do (if anything) to keep me as a customer. I was honest and told them that I had been checking out other companies and their prices and my current company was very willing to try and bargain with me. The offer they gave was a good one, but it was still higher than another company I looked at going with. In the end Hubby & I decided that we were going to take the best deal for our needs and will be switching to another provider. I know it will be a slight hassle to update address books and such but for the amount of money we will be saving...any little bit of hassle will be well worth it.
So you never know what companies are willing to do for you to keep you as a customer until you call. After all it's your money not theirs and they need your business, so it's good to have them do a little extra work to keep you as a customer.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

My son bought one of those phone jacks that plugs into your computer when he had to go out of the country on business and found out how much his cell phone would charge. It worked like a charm. I think it was $20 for the device and an additional $20 for one years service. I'm going to get one. It cost less for the entire year than one month's phone bill. And I rarely use my land line.

Jane