My cable/internet company operates on "promotions" that you have to renegotiate every two years. I only know when my two years is up because my bill suddenly takes a big jump. It's really annoying. A few months ago, I had to make the "dreaded" call to renegotiate my contract. At the time, I had their triple plan consisting of cable, internet and phone (landline).
I made the call and was told they could only lower my monthly bill by $5 with their current promotion. That still seemed like way too much. So I went through the whole spiel saying, "Hmmmm...I checked prices for other providers and they can go a lot lower than that." So the rep. "recalculated" and came up with another $5 off (if I used autopay on my credit card, so really not a discount). I finally asked if I could speak to a supervisor since, in my experience with this company, they have the power to offer a better price. I was told the supervisors were busy, but I could schedule to have one call the next day at 8:35 p.m. That was going to be on a Saturday night, by the way, but I was going to be home so I agreed. The appointment time came and went with no call.
So the next day, I was at a mall where the company has a physical storefront. I decided to go in and see if I could discuss my account with someone face-to-face. I was helped by a salesperson who got right on his computer and looked up my account. He scanned through all the current promotions and asked me a few questions (do you watch certain channels, still want the same internet speed, etc?). I ended up removing a sports package since my son had moved out and he was the only one who watched those channels. So the guy gave me a price that seemed decent, but still a bit more than I wanted to pay. So I asked what the price would be if I dropped the landline. We had been thinking about ditching it since we'd pretty much stopped using it. So he ran some numbers and gave me a really great price. I couldn't believe how much the landline was adding so I said yes, drop it! The guy punched a bunch of stuff into the computer and sent a DocuSign text to my phone so I could sign the contract. He first ran through everything that was included in my service package and confirmed the price. Easy, right?
Nope! I got home to find that our TV channels had been reset. We previously had 190 and we now had only 120. That wasn't the deal I made at the store. Deleting the sports package should have taken away around 10 channels. The guy at the store had, either by accident or on purpose, switched us to the basic TV channel package. I called the company that night, got it switched, was quoted a new price since the basic package had lowered the bill considerably, received a new DocuSign text, signed a new contract and the channels were restored. The next day while watching the DVR, I noticed we suddenly had only 20 hours of DVR storage rather than the 60 we had before. We tend to tape a lot and watch on weekends. Sometimes, we keep things for weeks before we get to them, so we really want the higher storage. So, I called again, explained the problem, new quote, DocuSign, etc. It was my 3rd contract in two days. While the agents were apologetic, neither would stick with the lower price or give us some type of discount because the guy at the store totally screwed up our service. And I now knew from experience that you can't even get a supervisor to call back. The bill was now $30 a month less than when I started which was fine, and at least I had my service levels back.
So later than evening (around 8:35), I get a call from the company. The guy says, "Hello, I'm calling from (cable company)." I said, "Yes, how can I help you?" He said, "What do you mean? You requested a call back." I told him that the callback was schedule for two days earlier and he said he knew and had been running behind. So while I had him on the phone, I proceeded to explain all the issues I'd had over the past few days. He said yeah, sorry about that. I would advise not to ask the guys at the stores about your account. They don't know what they're doing. Always call us instead. OK dude. Good advice. I asked if he could add a discount for all of the trouble. He said no, you already have a good price. So that was that. It was an extremely frustrating experience!
Every year the same song and dance of, "I'm switching if you cannot keep it the same because your competitor can!" Then the multiple holds to find a "deal" which isn't the best deal and I have to say not good enough. On hold ... again. A better offer then appears and it still stinks so I tell them I will call them back to cancel after I set up new service with the other provider. To which the magical supervisor gets involved and my rate doesn't change.
