Do you open and read your monthly utility bills and credit card bills line by line to make sure you’re not being over charged? You need to. All sorts of fees and heinous charges will appear therein, if you don’t watch your bills like a hawk. Sad, but true.
I say this from experience, as I just recently uncovered a $15/month mystery fee on our AT&T Wireless bill. When I called AT&T customer service to find out what this recurring monthly charge was for, the Rep instantly made the charges go bye-bye. She said it looked like a scam that’s activated simply by opening a text. So be very careful not to open a text message if you don’t know who it’s from—doing so unfortunately exposes one to digital pick pockets.
Also, I might have missed that bogus line item if my account was on auto-pay. I know auto-pay makes quick work of a tedious chore, but it also makes it tempting to forget about your bill and the important details therein. However you pay your bills, it pays to read first and pay second.
Haggle — It’s For Your Own Good
Okay, you’ve properly inspected your bills and found the assessments to be legitimate, but not altogether pleasing. Take your local cable company, for instance. They’re making major bucks off of your media habits, I am right? We’re going to do something about it in our household. We’re going to move from Comcast to Clear, the new WiMax service available in our area.
But for the sake of argument, let’s say we liked Comcast and wanted to keep the services we have. Fine. But the monthly packages need to be reworked at once. A simple phone call to Comcast ought to be enough, for they don’t want to lose customers. Customers are expensive to acquire and thus crucial to hang on to.
Rich Like You suggests calling Comcast to cancel your services. When they ask why, tell them you’re taking AT&T up on their $20/month introductory offer for Internet (whether it’s available in your area or not).
It was painless, the whole process took <5 minutes. If you have not been on a promotional rate, then just tell them that with the economy that you need to reduce your monthly expenses and that internet is a luxury item for you. Tell them that some of their competitors are offering rates significantly lower, and some even at $20. They will give you a speech about the speeds and other nonsense, just tell them that the speeds are not important to you, and that you hardly use the Internet.
I doubt you will have any problems, but if you do can not get them to budge, ask them to set the cancellation out a few days and then call back and cancel the cancellation.
Bottom line, services of all kinds are negotiable. With cash in short supply today that’s only going to become more and more true. Look to barter where you can, and look to haggle where you can. If you’re successful at it, you’ll have more money to spend on the things that matter most to you.