BT Retention's a waste of time

Chris101

My family have been with BT for 25 years with their telephone service and around 15 odd years or more or less the same month when BT first released BB at 0.5mb which costed back then £54 a month!

Currently have -
40mb infinity capped to 40gig
Telephone Anytime and caller display

Monthly cost - £43 a month!

Called BT as we are out of contract and the best the lady could offer was £38 same deal with unlimited infidlnity or £34 a month with basic weekend calls.

Even after being made aware of the length of time we have been with BT.
She refused to budge so now I am contemplating leaving and joining VM.

VM can offer my family as a new customer both packages as above with faster uncapped speeds for less than £30 a month!

Anyone experienced poor retention offers with BT?

macman

The fact that you've apparently been content to pay the rack rate for 25 years might be a factor in their decision to only offer you a fiver a month off. Long service does not earn you better rates-quite the opposite..But did you actually ask to leave and get put through to retentions? First level CS staff do not have the power to discount much.

poppasmurf_bewdley

You have a great opportunity to play each service provider off against each other.

Figure out how much you want to pay for the services you receive, then ring BT, Virgin, Sky and TalkTalk, and tell each of them one of the others has offered you a deal for £1 less than the figure you want to pay, and tell them you are seeing if they can do better.

That's what I did for my sister with Virgin, and she ended up staying with them for £20 a month less than she had been paying previously. That's the second time I've done it for her.

None of these companies have any loyalty to you, so don't have any for them. Business is business - as the companies like to say.

Pincher

You managed to CALL a retention department?

The usual sequence is you cancel, and THEY call you, out of the blue.

The front line call centre staff must not be allowed to offer anything worthwhile, because every deal hungry customer will be calling up to haggle, clogging up the call centre with unproductive arguments.

Once upon a time, with badly run sales departments in smaller companies, you used to be able to play one salesman against another, e.g. "I'll place the order for ten tonnes of copper tubing with you if you give me 0.2% more off than your colleague Jerry." especially near the end of a quarter, but under cutting your colleague only encourages more haggling from the customer in the future, so a good sales manager needs to put a stop to it.

Discounts can only be offered from a dark room inaccessible by the customer. If there is a number you can call, we will all be calling it.

marvin

Never offered me anything nor did I receive phone call offering me a better deal. Over 30 years I had that line in the end I was not using it so it had to go and go it did.