The folks from Rogers Wireless have been calling me incessantly for the past week or two. They always call twice, from an unlisted Toronto number, and never leave a voice mail.
To get them to stop, I finally answered today. As I expected, they were trying to get me to sign on to a fixed-term contract by “offering” me a brand new phone.
Except my phone works fine. Sure, the plug for the charger needs to be jiggled a bit before it works, and the exterior buttons turn the ringer off when it’s in my pocket. But I can still make and receive calls and text messages.
So I told the guy I wasn’t interested. Then he decides he wants to sell me on cool new features, but I’m happy with what I have.
I ask him if there’s anything he can offer me that would reduce my bill and keep the same features. Then he pulls out this “exclusive offer” where I get 100 daytime and 1000 evening/weekend minutes for $15 a month, $10 cheaper than my current plan (which also includes unlimited incoming calls). Knowing that I only use about 100 minutes a month anyway, I figure it’s worth it (evenings also start earlier, 6pm instead of 8pm). I tell him to go ahead.
He also gets me to change my features package for another one at the same price which gives me more text messages and has caller name ID.
But when he told me I’d have to sign on for 36 months, I hestitated. I don’t know where I’ll be in 36 months, and I don’t know if I’m ready to commit that much. No problem, he says, he can do it for 24 months instead (that’s apparently the minimum).
So in exchange for a 24-month commitment, my already cheap cellphone bill is now $10 cheaper per month, and I have more features.
So if Rogers is calling you to get you to sign a new contract, consider the following:
- If you’re happy with your phone, tell them that and see what kind of plan features you can get instead
- Ask them what they can offer you to reduce your bill instead of adding new features
- Don’t readily accept a 36-month contract. See if they’ll reduce the commitment to 24 months. (After those 24 months, you can bet they’ll be calling again to repeat the process.)
- Do a quick calculation in your head to see if it’s worth it. If they’re not offering a significant discount, don’t accept a new contract. Either get a new phone or tell them you’re thinking of switching to a new, cheaper provider.
Bah, that’s old news. I have never paid full price for my Bell Sympatico internet, I have always paid 5-10$ less per month than the advertised price. How? Call and say you want to cancel, it’s too expensive. The poor kids at the other end (usually kids, my little brother worked as a customer serive rep, and he’ll always be a kid to me :) ) does his/her best to keep you as a customer, ’cause that’s their job. Sometimes they’ll say “Ok, what’s a good price for you?” and you can say something like $20 or $25/month, and so they’ll say “no, we can’t go lower than x (29.95, for ex)”. So then they’ll give you a contract that for the next x months, you pay the cheap price, but after the time is up it goes back to the regular price. When you get your bill at the “regular” price after a few months, call, act like a country bumpkin, pretend that you have no idea about whatever contract they say you have, and say “wtf?! why is my Internet so expensive?!?! I want to cancel!”, and you’ll start the process all over again. Works like a charm. Sometimes they’ll give you a shitty deal and you need to push a bit more, but often, they just go right away to the loest price, because then they have you right away and can go on to the next call. Heck, I think I’ll call them tonight just for kicks, and ask them to take a few bucks off of my current price. I’ll let you know what happens. :)
TKS for these good advices. Now, any advice on how to get the $100 rebate promised on each LG phone we bought in August at Rogers? It is always supposed to come on the next bill.
Be careful with the features because in our plan we have free video calls (I don’t mean sending video files, I mean calls with video images) for one year. But, every month they charge us the calls, so we have to go back to Roger’s on St-Denis to cancel these charges and make them bother people by phone to check what’s going on with our rebates.
I got three months of free long distance out of Rogers once just by telling them I was going to switch to Bell. I should try it again actually.
Rogers calls me incessantly about getting a cell phone. I hate them and am not interested but they keep calling. I once told them I would take their phone if the phone was free and the service was free…forever. He responded with “well, we’d all like free service, but unfortunately, if we did that, Rogers would quickly go out of business”. I said “GOOD, I hate Rogers!”. He didn’t seem to happy with that. Poor kid, never sold me a cell phone and seemed pretty upset about it.
Well, I got home to late to call them, I’ll try this weekend and keep you all posted.
Save even more by threatening to go to Fido, as they have no system access fee. Although they are owned by Rogers, they still like people to stay with Rogers. They can give a credit for it for one year I think it is (month by month credit). I also got plan discounted as Fido plans start at $15. But if you have the $15, that is not bad..