MSE News: Sky and the AA are easiest to haggle with

misthaufen01

Got my renewal through for the AA. I have personal cover (i.e. any car), roadside and relay. Renewal was £115. I phoned them and said 'that's a bit steep, seeing as though new customers get the same cover for £69'. The operator transferred me to their renewals team, who dropped it to £69.

A 3 minute phone call and I saved £46 :T

Markworthy

One short phone call to the AA just got us a reduction of 50% on our current breakdown charge! We just said that we had been taking quotes from other companies and wondered if the AA could match them. The initial response was 30% off but, when we quoted figures from other companies, a supervisor authorised the 50% that she said was the maximum possible. (We still cancelled - Tesco are cheaper still!)

DrEvil69

Hi, Thanks for the great advice on your site, spent 5 minutes on the phone with SKY yesterday, told them I could no longer afford their TV and was switching to Freeview. After a few minutes the nice guy offered me 25% off my bill for the next 12 months with no contract tie in and ESPN free for 3 months. Total saving of £156 a year and Free Sport, RESULT!

Macky-O

I phoned sky yesterday and told them that honestly couldn't afford £71.25 p month for movies+sport+ESPN+HD. Advisor was very helpful. Said they couldn't help me with tie-in to broadband etc coz we live in v. rural area but they cut my bill to £49.25 p month for six months for being loyal customer. Thanx.

ScottishExPat

makenix20 wrote: »

About two months ago my anti virus software was coming up for renewal and i telephoned their help desk and asked the lady that since i have been a loyal customer for several years what discount would i be able to get.

I was thinking perhaps about £8 off for the year but i was offered half price which i was really happy about so it pays to haggle.

Ian

Thanks so much for this message. It would never have occurred to me to haggle on Antivirus but having read this, and with my deal due to renew now I had a go.

Using the tips, I said that I was happy with the service/ product but wasn't sure about renewing automatically. I said I'd seen a comparable McAfee deal (just Googled it, took 30 secs) for £32.49 (Norton were asking £44.99, which is for 3 PCs). I was immediately offered a £10 discount but, better, also 6 months extension for free. I didn't push for a bigger discount, which maybe I could have but wasn't feeling confident and felt I'd got a decent improvement on the default deal.

It's small sums but all adds up and has given me the confidence to try for bigger savings on things like my car insurance.

Thanks!

altheavlive

I recently received a regular call from Vodafone trying to sell me extra things. I said the only time I would be interested is if you could help me get rid of my current phone as I hate it, But since you can't do that until January then the conversation was useless. The guy went away and came back and said he had spoken to my manager and because I had been with them for so long they would waiver the additional three months I had in my current contract so I could upgdrade. Officially that was a 6 months early outage cost to Vodafone from my existing contract, as I already had an option to upgrade three months early. In addition to this I got unlimited data for the first three months, a new Galaxy S3 FOC, unlimited texts, calls and after the first month 1Gb of Data. To top this of the actual charge of the line rental is supposed to be £37 I negotiated a further 25% discount of this taking the charge down to £27.50 which is only £1.50 more I am paying now but with an infinite increase on texts and calls and Data. My previous tariff only allowed for 300 minutes pcm and 300 texts with 250 of Data usage. I personally think I got a great deal

LindaJean_2

We found a smashing set of garden lanterns in The Range at £69, but all they had left was a display set - completely clean and unmarked - so I asked for a discount as it wasn't a boxed set. I thought I might get away with 5% - imagine my glee when we were offered 20% off!! Thank you Martin! :T

HateTheseSillyForumNames

The best deal I ever got from haggling was when I wasn't even trying! I found a good phone and internet deal with PlusNet, because I'd only renewed my TalkTalk contract a few days before I decided to exercise my 14 day cancellation rights, with no intention of doing anything other than cancelling my contract and then giving PlusNet a call. I was quite adamant on the phone (without being rude!) that this was what I wanted to do.

I was pleasantly suprised when the customer service assistant offered to upgrade me to a better package on a slightly discounted price. I also used Martin's tip of asking to pay the line rental upfront to reduce the overall cost. When I pointed out that it was still about £3 a month more expensive than the PlusNet deal she lowered it even further, so I ended up getting the package for about 50p less than the original PlusNet offer. I now have extra internet usage and extra features (was particularly pleased with caller display). Result!

Phat_Manka

Hi All

I worked for the AA for a while and they really are easy to haggle with, but the staff do have targets and limits. Remember if you mention the internet price this enables the staff to match the current internet price (the exception being the BRC product). But you do need to mention this! Each staff member should really only give away 35% so thats what you should realistically aim for, unless the internet is cheaper. The staff cannot compete with cashback sites though. The retention team may be able to offer you a free service instead of a reduction, so its worth figuring out which is going to be better for you first. Do remember that they do have a fair usage policy, if you have used them frequently then the staff cannot discount the policy.

Be aware and check your renewal documents carefully, two identical policies can have two different prices, the AA have something which they call a pricing differential. Each product you have on your bill MAY be 3 pound more expensive than an identical policy. The AA state that this is a test, but its a test that has been going for around 2 years and appears to only target longer standing members. Most staff will simply remove these if they are noticed (Although this can get you a telling off!!).

Hope this helps - great site;-)

Manka

aglowworm

Hello. My first post here because I wanted to let everyone know: Haggling really does work! And you don't have to be pushy to get a discount - just give it a try

After reading the brilliant 'How to haggle successfully' page on MSE I thought I would try it out when buying a new washing machine from Currys.

The machine was discounted online, but I called and I spoke to them directly over the phone. They really wanted to sell me their 'Whatever Happens' service plan, so before agreeing to buy it, I politely asked if they could do me any discount on the machine or delivery. She went to speak to her manager and told me they could give me delivery, installation of the new machine and removal and recycling of my old machine for £5 instead of the usual £20. I didn't have to push at all and I may even have been able to get it for free if I'd tried, but I was happy with the £15 off, so I went ahead.

(I do of course have my 45 days to cancel the service/care plan once the machine has been delivered )