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Day 14: Call For Discounts
This is my all-time favorite tip.
Gather all of your bills – all of them.
Write down your current interest rates / charges / fees – whatever.
Call each and every company with which you do business and ask for a discount, a rate decrease, a loyalty bonus – ask for something.
Do this once a quarter.
In the past year I’ve managed to get a discounted rate for my telephone service and my satellite service. When I was getting out of debt, I managed to get a lower rate on my credit card.
Remember names, ask for supervisors, be polite, be persistent.
Remember, YOU are the customer and these companies work for YOU! You do not have to feel ashamed, embarrassed, or intimidated. There is nothing wrong with asking for a discount or a reduced rate.
Put yourself to work. Turn off the television and start making these important phone calls.
Have you managed to get discounts or lower rates? Leave a comment and let us know. If you are a blogger, write a post about how you received a discount or a reduced interest rate, and contact me. I’ll be more than happy to link to your post.
Click here to read all of the 33 Days And 33 Ways To Save Money And Reduce Debt posts.
If you work for a large company, check and see what sort of benefits they have with outside companies. My company has discounts with all major US cellular companies to the tune of 20% off the bill.
I managed to save $25/month last night by calling my cable company AND get digital cable added in for free at the lower price. Thanks for the nudge to follow up on this.
Tip: When you do call, navigate the phone tree to the “disconnect service” option. That group always has special deals to entice people to stay. Second Tip: If the deal they give you is a time-limited promotion, set a reminder in your calendar to call again before the deal expires. Luckily, the $25/month discount I got last night is a permanent change.
Do you find that this works for standard utilities like gas/electricity/water? I’ve had good luck before with luxury items like phone and cable where there are competitive alternatives, but the necessities seem like they’d be much harder to negotiate.
One thing I found out doing this though. Most store-brand credit cards (Home Depot in particular) will flatly refuse to lower their rates. Otherwise, this is a great way to reduce your interest and costs. It’s worked so well that no credit card I carry has over 8% interest.
We cut our DirecTV bill from @$75 a month to
$50 a month simply by calling and asking (I did
mention the offers from Comcast, etc.). The
discount is good for a year and the rep said
when it expires to call and ask for it again.
That’s $300 saved for the year.
We also cut our phone/internet expenses when my
husband dropped his plan and we went to a
shared plan and signed up for a bundle (home
phone, 2 cell phones, and DSL all under one
bill with one provider). With husband’s $60
phone bill gone we save $720 over the year
for his phone plus other discounts we receive
by singing up for the bundle.
This was also successful for me — I called Capital One for my credit card, and was able to reduce the APR from 19% down to 14%
Also did this with my car insurance — I asked for a “more competitive rate” and was able to cut costs down from ~$1900/year to ~$1100/year ($800+ savings a year!)
I still have to call the cable company to see if they can provide a ‘more competitive rate’ for the service, hopefully they can