Tired of paying $46.95 every month, I’ve been shopping around for a high-speed internet service that is cheaper than the one we currently have and of comparable quality. A few of my friends have signed up with National Capital Freenet (NCF) (a non-profit organization that offers high-speed internet for $30 per month with the purchase of a modem) and are very happy with the service.
I decided to cancel my current internet service and sign up with NCF, so I called my service provider and asked to please cancel my account. The agent on the phone asked why I wanted to cancel after being a customer for over three years. I replied that I am looking for cheaper options and right off the bat, she offered to drop the monthly fees to $39.95 with a one-year contract, which would equal a saving of 15%.
One of my rules of thumb is to never ever sign a contract, so I told her that she should go ahead and cancel my subscription because the option I am considering is still cheaper than her discounted offer and in any case, I am not interested in anything that involved a contract. Now, she asks me to hold the line for a few minutes and sure enough she comes back with a revised offer: $29.95 per month for the same service without a contract, or 36% cheaper than the list price. I didn’t think twice before saying “Deal!”.
So, go ahead, call your cell phone or internet service provider and ask them for a discount. In the worst case, they may refuse, but then you may also be pleasantly surprised at their answer. You keep the same service as before, only now it is a bit cheaper.
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13 responses so far ↓
1 MillionDollarJourney.com // Feb 19, 2007 at 6:38 am
Great post. Is your provider with Rogers? I find that their retentions department is generous to long time customers, especially wireless.
FT
http://www.milliondollarjourney.com
2 Christian // Feb 19, 2007 at 11:09 am
Thanks for this great tip,
I called my ISP (R.g..s) this Monday morning.
I got 20% discount per month for the next 12 months (Ottawa). No contract.
3 PhilC // Feb 19, 2007 at 11:57 am
You think that’s crazy. Try to cancel your Visa card and see what happens.
I got a Visa Dividend Platinum last year to replace my Visa Classic. The 1%-2% kickback is nice and I needed the rental car insurance. About 10 months later, I received a notice in that if the balance on my Visa Classic was static for a full year, they would charge me a 10$ inactivity fee. So I called Visa and asked to deactivate my Visa Classic, but instead, in exchange for not canceling, they offered to credit my account with 25$. Covering the 10$ fee and giving me an extra 15$ for something special (or a 25$ if I use the card before the deadline) . I was so surprised I accepted right away. I should have put on the insulted tone, they probably would have offered 50$.
Is this related to Visa going public? Or are they just betting that in the long run I will screw up and not pay my bill on time? I would love to see the calculations behind this 25$ give away.
Back on topic, the ISP thing is a nice realisation. Getting the big fat company to bend your way sure feels good, but you should still switch. A lot of companies offer highspeed for 30$ (even 25$ in some cases) and on top of that they actually answer the phone when you call the tech support line.
ISP Reviews can be found here:
http://www.dslreports.com/
4 anjo // Feb 19, 2007 at 3:55 pm
While I think it is great that you managed to get your current ISP to drop their price, would they have done so without the threat of lower-priced competition? Not likely. I’ve encountered this many times over the last couple of years; when getting a mortgage, buying electronics, or with insurance or phone/tv/internet. In those cases, I have tried to reward the original cost-cutting company with my business rather than sticking with the “take-you-for-granted” bank/telecommunications company/retailer that will only provide you with their best offer when threatened with losing you as a customer. If most people settle for the reactive matching offer from their current provider, we will see less competition for our business.
However, on the other hand, I also appreciate that it can be a real pain in the butt to switch services just to save a few bucks a month.
Anjo
5 Michael Graham Richard // Feb 19, 2007 at 4:44 pm
I’d be interested in knowing what your friend’s experience with NCF is like.
6 PhilC // Feb 19, 2007 at 5:05 pm
Anjo,
Switching ISP is extremely simple. Plus it’s not just a few bucks. In this case it’s 15$ a month, almost 200$ a year. That’s a nice meal or even better it’s the expense fees on 10,000$ of your favorite bank’s mutual funds.
I have done it twice already. Once for better service (I wanted a static IP at home) and once for better price. In both cases it took about 5 business days to complete the switch and service interruption was about 3 hours.
7 Jon D. // Feb 19, 2007 at 7:49 pm
My mother in law has high-speed through NCF and it’s great. If I didn’t get a deal through work, I’d switch.
8 Investor // Feb 19, 2007 at 11:16 pm
Try out http://www.acanac.ca they have a great service, I just switched to them from bell, I am getting it for $18.00 per month for unlimited download high speed service. I was paying over 30$ with bell.
http://ridetomilliondollars.blogspot.com
9 Canadian Capitalist // Feb 20, 2007 at 4:04 am
My friend who has NCF says that his internet service is great. It does go down once in a while but nothing really bad.
I would still have switched to NCF, but then I have to buy a modem and co-ordinate the change. So, for now, I am sticking with my current provider.
10 larry macdonald // Feb 24, 2007 at 8:33 am
Great post. A personal interest story with a very useful message for all. Will link to it (after RRSP) season to let my readers know. By the way, thanks for listing me in your Canadian Financial Blogs section. But I notice the listing is appended to the listing for Inveting Intelligently. Might be better to separate it with a space.
11 KS // Feb 26, 2007 at 11:05 pm
Hi CC,
Great post. You inspired me to look at my own
internet and phone bills. I realized that I am
paying way too much and can get better service
for less money.
Currently I’m paying:
Local Phone (plus one feature): $29.12+tax = $33.20
Internet Hi-speed Lite (128kbps): $24.94+tax = $26.69
So that comes out to $59.89 for phone and 128kbps internet.
Primus is offering local phone service (not VOIP) and
internet access (512 kpbs) for $34.95+tax = $39.84
$20/month cheaper than what I’m paying now. Thats a saving of $480 over 2 yrs and I get faster internet access.
If you add one feature to the local phone service with Primus plus hi-speed internet (512kpbs) it costs $45.54 with tax still $14.35 cheaper per month.
Here’s the link to their Triple Bundle offer:
http://www.primus.ca/en/residential/bundle/bundledServices-bundlelite.htm
Thanks again for the great post, and helping your readers to save money.
12 Money Matters! / Reading Canadian financial blogs // Mar 24, 2007 at 7:28 pm
[...] One way blogs can build audiences for themselves, I believe, is through personalization of content — especially when the stories from a blogger’s world provide useful tips, lessons, and motivation for others. Consider these examples: Canadian Financial DIY’s worse investment ever Canadian Capitalist wins a discountCanadian Financial Stuff’s reason for financial planning On another matter, Investing Intelligently takes an independent stand on certain practices in the blogosphere such as i) link exchanges (where blog rolls reflect less what’s worth reading and more who links back to you), ii) collaborative agreements (e.g. John Chow’s trading of links for reviews of his site), and iii) demos/posts on certain topics, products etc. in return for monetary compensation or favors. As Investing Intelligently says in Things You’ll Never Hear Me Blog About: “On the topic of annoying things, I have been receiving an incessant amount of offers these days via email for link sharing, collaborations, requests to demo debt consolidation software …. [which I delete].” His readers can take comfort, he says, that his content comes “straight from the heart.” [...]
13 Phaedrus // Jul 13, 2007 at 3:45 pm
I just did the same thing. We were paying 80 dollars a month for the 6meg high speed, and rogers landline phone.
Called them up, told them about the Acanac.ca offer: $237 for the 1st year. Which is $19 a month. for 5meg highspeed DSL service. $8 for a dry line (phone jack with no service), And $10 for a VOIP phone. OR you could just go with Skype’s VOIP service which is even cheaper.
ANyways. I would totally have gone for this deal, but I didn’t like to pay for 1 year advance. I don’t know where I will be in a few months. Don’t want to lock myself down.
So I called up Rogers, and they offered us discounts to bring our bill down to 50 a month for everything for 6 months.
Cool with me. I would be paying 37/month for Acanac. And that’s a VOIP phone instead of a home phone. AND no contract, nothing. That’s worth 13 bucks a month to me.
Thanks guys! Great savings information.
-Stephen
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