Last month, my promotional rate with my cable company expired. That meant my bill was going to jump. Just what everyone loves to have happen. So I called the cable company to see what they could do.
The answer that I got was that they couldn’t do much, but that I would be eligible for another promotional rate in three months. I accepted that and hung up with the rep.
A few days later, I decided to call back and reduce my services. Even if it was only a $10 difference, that $10 would add up over the months.
Surprise, surprise, there was no 3 month waiting period for a new promotional rate. In fact, I was eligible for a better promo than I was on for the past two years, with no change in services. So my bill is lowered, and I get to keep all my services.
Oh, and I have to go through this all again next year. But it’s worth it.
Megan is a 30-something government employee in the Washington, DC area. She got interested in Personal Finance when she got out of college and realized that her paycheck wasn’t going to go as far as she had hoped. Since starting this blog, she has managed to buy a house and make a solid start on her retirement goals, and hopes to help others do the same. Here is her story:
In 2007, I was a gainfully employed 20-something with no debt but not a lot of knowledge about personal finance. It was a co-worker’s comment about Roth IRAs that sent me to the internet, searching for information. It was then that I realized that I really didn’t know a whole lot about personal finance and that my current financial situation was due a lot to inherent frugal tendencies, generous family members, a fear of debt, and good luck. While that was working for me, clearly I needed a better plan.
While I had no debt, I was also pretty much living paycheck to paycheck and not worrying about going over budget (I say this as if I had a real budget) because I had an emergency fund set aside to cover any overages.
Except that’s not what an emergency fund is for.
So I did a lot of research, read a lot of blogs, and decided that I needed a plan. I needed to budget. I needed to know what I was spending my money on. I needed to prepare for the future.
I decided to create a blog not only to make myself accountable to others but also to share the knowledge that I gained along the way. I’ve learned so much from my fellow bloggers, and I hope that my readers can find something useful in what I have to share as well.
Glad you asked again. I’ve had no luck with the cable company but now I know that I have to call back. I made my own personal challege to negotiate for everything (incidentally I called it my “Just Ask!” challenge) so the cable company is definitely next on my list.
Anothing thing is to go through your bill very carefully and ask what exactly each line means. I just got internet service a little while back and when my second statement came I wondered what a particular service charge was for and I called and asked them and they told me it was so up to 4 people can connect. Since its just me, I immediately had them remove that and that reduced my bill by $5 a month.