Cutting Your Internet Bill, Part I

Finally, here is the simplest trick you will ever learn about how to manage communications services: ask to speak to the Customer Retention Department. Companies spend nearly all of their marketing budgets trying to steal customers from one another. The amount of money they spend trying to keep you as a customer is almost nothing. The best deals? Not for current customers. The free offers? Not if we already own your soul.

But this is exactly backward. It costs more to gain a new customer than to keep a good customer, and once you lose a good customer the odds are that they will never, ever come back.

So when you are faced with being treated badly as a current customer, wait until your contract is up. Then call customer service. NOTE: customer service representatives do not have the authority to help you. They just don’t. Demand to speak to the customer retention department. Tell them that if they don’t give you as good a deal as a new customer, you will drop your service and see what their competitor has to offer.

Customer Retention Department. Your best friend in a confusing world of communications.

Next week: Decision Points. Part Two of this series.