If you don't ask you don't get !!! - Internet Price Reduction

I was getting a little annoyed with my current Now TV Super Fibre Broadband / TV / Anytime Calls Package gradually creeping up in price until it had reached £58 odd per month.

I checked online and they are offering the same package as mine for £36.99 to new customers.

So I rang the cancellations department this morning and after a few minutes of music they came back with a price of £34.99 for the same package. I had only asked them to match the new customer price so I was quite impressed. No haggling they just agreed to the reduction from today.

Has anyone else whoever their supplier had such an easy money saving call ?

It's well worth picking up the phone from my experience today.

Butts said:

Has anyone else whoever their supplier had such an easy money saving call

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It is a fairly standard response surely. I have done that many times. Ring them up, say you are unhappy, say X has offered a similar service at £Y discount and wait for the price reduction. Almost always works

I can see why companies price like that but it seems unethical to me. Unfortunately if I resolved not to do business with such companies I might find myself up the proverbial creek. ( But not spending much money!)

Not the only company to operate that way by any means, I have a friend who has had the same experience with Virgin.

I have now given up my landline, and access the internet through a 4G router. Cheap, no-contract SIM-only data deals are available now from most mobile networks. Although for some reason, many seem to have set up subsidiary companies (such as VOXIO, GIFFGAFF, etc) to offer their no-contract deals.

Belperpete said:

Not the only company to operate that way by any means, I have a friend who has had the same experience with Virgin.

I have now given up my landline, and access the internet through a 4G router. Cheap, no-contract SIM-only data deals are available now from most mobile networks. Although for some reason, many seem to have set up subsidiary companies (such as VOXIO, GIFFGAFF, etc) to offer their no-contract deals.

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Same with insurers - the prices creep up each renewal but they suddenly find they can offer a reduced price when you phone up to cancel.

Businesses have had different subsidiaries/branches for different "markets" for decades. It's so they can keep their "premium" brand at top pricing for customers who don't worry about price, but also offer goods/services (often the same) to customer who are more price conscious.

Consumer electricals and cars are two obvious industries that have been at it for as long as I remember. Where you can get (fundamentally) the same TV, DVD player, computer, camera, washing machine, cooker, van/car, with a different "badge" and some other superficial differences.

Firms can't offer the same product to different types of customers and still charge the same, so they have to come up with ways to create almost artificial differences as a ploy to justify their expensive brand/marque and "cheapen" the low end brand/marque.

Back to insurers - many of the so-called "competing" firms are actually the same firm with a different "badge". You can tell visually from the same websites (they "look" different superficially, i.e. different colour scheme, different home page) - once you're in and filling in quote requests, logging on to your own account, etc., it's clear it's the same system behind the scenes. Same with paperwork - letterheads may be different, but the layout, font, wording is the same. Lots of the "names", i.e. supermarkets, high street stores, etc, don't have their own insurance firm at all - they're just another "brand" name of the few big firms and probably only charging for use of their name, similar to how Branson charges for Virgin marketing/brand rights.

I renewed my car insurance recently. The quote was £50 higher than last year; I hadn't made any claims but I had added my girlfriend onto the policy.
So I rang them up and asked how much it would be if it was me only as the named driver and they said it would be higher. I asked why then has it gone up if I haven't made a claim and having someone else as a named driver decreases the premium. Their reply was that as I had made a change during the year (adding my girlfriend) it had triggered certain flags with whatever software they use to generate quotes.
They went away and had a chat with their manager or whatever they do, came back and took the £50 back off the quote.

Strat-tastic said:

I renewed my car insurance recently. The quote was £50 higher than last year; I hadn't made any claims but I had added my girlfriend onto the policy.
So I rang them up and asked how much it would be if it was me only as the named driver and they said it would be higher. I asked why then has it gone up if I haven't made a claim and having someone else as a named driver decreases the premium. Their reply was that as I had made a change during the year (adding my girlfriend) it had triggered certain flags with whatever software they use to generate quotes.
They went away and had a chat with their manager or whatever they do, came back and took the £50 back off the quote.

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My car insurance 'automatically renewed' recently at 40% higher than what I was previously paying. I've had no crashes/points etc and never made a single insurance claim, so had another years no claims. I switched to a different company offering close to what I originally paid. When I rang to cancel with the original company they told me they would price match... ...I didn't take them up on their offer on the basis they stealthily tried to up the price by 40%.

Iskra said:

My car insurance 'automatically renewed' recently at 40% higher than what I was previously paying.

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That's why companies with ongoing billing (phones, electricity etc) love Direct Debit. They can put the price up and in most cases the customer drifts through by inertia, whereas if they had to write a cheque like in olden days they would think twice. Of course the DD system notifies you of the upcoming take, buy many people, even if resolved to change supplier, put the matter aside FTTB and then forget it.

Insurance companies however think they hae a right to take money from your bank account even without a DD arrangement - I don't understand how that can be legal.

Every year without fail I can knock £100 off my car insurance renewal simply by ringing up.

It's a laziness/convenience tax, nothing more.

underbank said:

Same with insurers - the prices creep up each renewal but they suddenly find they can offer a reduced price when you phone up to cancel.

Businesses have had different subsidiaries/branches for different "markets" for decades. It's so they can keep their "premium" brand at top pricing for customers who don't worry about price, but also offer goods/services (often the same) to customer who are more price conscious.

Consumer electricals and cars are two obvious industries that have been at it for as long as I remember. Where you can get (fundamentally) the same TV, DVD player, computer, camera, washing machine, cooker, van/car, with a different "badge" and some other superficial differences.

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Hardware/Electronics companies are very poor for this, in some cases the same hardware ships to all units but there is an artificial lock on the cheaper ones that only exists to make people buy the expensive one

SS4 said:

Hardware/Electronics companies are very poor for this, in some cases the same hardware ships to all units but there is an artificial lock on the cheaper ones that only exists to make people buy the expensive one

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A common thing they used to do was a different front/top piece where the controls were. The board behind was identical, but the expensive version had more knobs or dials or switches on it's front plate, whereas the cheaper one didn't. It was quite a well known wheeze to buy the cheaper one, take off the cover plate and drill new holes to open it up to the controls behind to turn it into the expensive/full feature one. Not pretty but it worked to save a few quid. Not easy these days with the micro electronics unfortunately. I seem to remember most Amstrad things were "adaptable" such as HiFi systems, CB radios, etc as they were pretty rough and ready inside so ideal candidates - you could tell by just looking at them, i.e. same size case, same locations of the common controls, and gaps where the "expensive" version controls were.

Two instances from the past :

1) Microsoft Windows NT was available in server and workstation editions, the former much more expensive as it had, obviously, the server and network management capabilities. Hackers looked at the binaries of the two versions and found that both had the same code except for a single changed bit - which was a flag to block off those capabilities in the workstation edition.

2) In the 1970s, when Pentax were selling their Spotmatic cameras (their last screw mount series), the better models had a 1/1000 sec top shutter speed. The budget version, the Spotmatic 500 had (you guessed it) a 1/500 sec top speed. But the shutter was identical : the shutter speed dial simply had a stop to prevent the top speed being accesed, and of course the "1000" engraving was omiitted.

Ianno87 said:

Every year without fail I can knock £100 off my car insurance renewal simply by ringing up.

It's a laziness/convenience tax, nothing more.

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For everyone who negotiates themselves a good deal, there must be someone else subsidising them by paying over the odds for exactly the same service. Lazy people who deserve what they get? They could just be elderly, poorly educated, have mental health issues, have busy lives or foolishly trust the companies involved not to rip them off.