Last weekend I saved £60 and got myself a free wireless router in the space of a 5 minute phone call!
That’s not bad going is it?
We’ve been with the same broadband company for years and never had any real problems, but this weekend our wireless router started to get a bit temperamental so I decided to do what I’ve been meaning to do for a while and look around to see if I could find a better deal.
We’re actually really happy with our current broadband provider and we were quite reluctant to leave them, – I don’t know the technical ins and outs but I know that Mr Frugal likes to play games online with his friends some nights and for that we need good speeds and no download limit (or something like that anyway).
So, rather than leave them and have the hassle of changing our provider, I found the best deal that I could online and then called our current company. I told them I was considering going with someone else as I’d found a really good deal elsewhere. The lady asked me what the best deal I’d seen was and then proceeded to match the monthly price that I’d found. She also gave me six months free and a new router for staying with them!
Result!
Apparently it costs much less to retain an existing customer than to recruit new customers so it’s in a company’s best interests to give you an incentive to stay with them rather than see you going to a competitor. I believe that the majority of companies who have a cancellation department, have one in order to tempt you to stay so it follows that they will have something up their sleeves to use to do this.
You just need to give them a call and tell them that you’re thinking of cancelling and ask them what they can do for you instead. Just make sure that you’re armed with the best alternative deal available so that you do sound like you are considering switching.
In the past I’ve spoken to the cancellations department at Sky and told them that I was considering changing to our local cable TV provider and they’ve offered to reduce the price of our monthly TV package AND given us free movies and sports for 3 months so it’s worth contacting them as well. We’ve also done this with our mobile phone contracts at the end of the contract and had both of our line rentals reduced along with more minutes and texts thrown in.
And to be fair, if your current provider doesn’t match the great deal you’ve found and there really is a better offer out there, you should consider moving anyway 😉
Try it and see how much you can save!
