A couple of Flaws

Miserableadvisor

Having read some of the 'Haggle with Sky, AA and more' column on this website and I feel a bit sorry for people who are being fed these 'haggling techniques'. Quite frankly most of it is utter dross. Here is just a few flaws in this.

Problems mean discounts

If you've had issues with the company (slow broadband speed, poor mobile network coverage, wrong payments taken), mention this politely.

They should want to try and make it up to you. Then again, are you sure you want to stay? This makes the salesperson believe you're genuine about threatening to leave, and they may offer a deal to compensate for the past issues.


Nope. It doesn't. Things go wrong. Things get fixed. Line drawn under it. This doesn't help you get a better deal.

People can check on your account history for faults and the date when they were reported. Worse yet, If this was 4 months ago, and you either haven't had a fault or are lying it couldn't be that important or you would have mentioned it at the time. Or they'll just offer to put you through to a repairs team.


Tell them you're going to leave

If you don't get the deal you want with customer service, the key to getting to customer retentions is telling them you are considering leaving. Of course, we don't want you to lie. But if you don't get a good enough deal, you should genuinely consider ditching.

Once connected, repeat your request. The more genuine you are about disconnecting, the more you should get a better offer, matching the market's best tariffs.



Good 'Ol Marty Boy described this as the powerhouse technique, right Martin?


:money:

Wrong Martin.

Do you think that you are the only person who has came through to the call centre staff member that day, over the course of the 8 hour shift, Probably working for a company with a customer base of millions, when doing about a call every 10 minutes that says they want to leave? It doesn't quite give the scare factor claimed here and staff will quickly see through this and see it as a lie (if you are lying) which gets you off to a bad start.

A simple, ' Its time for me to renew my deal, what offers do you have on?', would suffice. Just be honest. It doesn't come out of call centre staff's salary when you get a discount. As a matter of fact, up selling to you does. So if they can offer you discounted rates somewhere to offer you a different service on top of that and it works for you then they will. Otherwise, they're just going to more than likely give you what you want to get on to the next sales opportunity.

Also what these comparisons ultimately get brought down to is price. Knocking a couple of pounds off your bills each month and perhaps sacrificing a service with more added extras, discount perks and generally a better service just isn't worth it. Sad thing is though you've taken that BB provider who's routers are made from wallpaper paste out on 'only a 12 month contract'.

Use the phrases that pay

Lets go through some of them one by one.

I've worked out my monthly budget, and my absolute max is £[insert price here]/month

Do you really want to tell a stranger your monthly budget first of all? If so. This isn't the most unreasonable thing.

Virgin Media / TalkTalk / the RAC / [insert name of rival company here] can do it for less...

So why phone up in the first place to the company that does it more expensive? Could it be that the company you called up or currently are with have a better product? The Audacity of them to charge more!

I need to think about it...

So waiting to get through, having a circa 10 minute conversation and then calling back in 1 hour to do what you set out to do in the first place? OK:)

I think my husband / wife will go bonkers if I pay that...

So Assuming your name is on the account, or even if you have given the relevant passwords and security questions, you are by declaring that you can make decisions about these sort of things. Are you now saying you aren't allowed to?

Ask to speak to a supervisor

Supervisors or managers are just that. They MANAGE staffs performance. They aren't there to give better discounts. And it doesn't put the fear of God into the staff you are speaking to either when asking for their supervisors.It wastes yours and the person at their work's time. furthermore, it just makes you look like a petulant child with some jaded sense of entitlement.

I called sky to renew my package about a week ago. I was getting a 60% percent discount last year. The call centre member of staff said he could only do 50% percent off this year. (ONLY 50%!!) Now unless it was Rupert Murdoch on the other side of the phone putting on an accent, I don't think the chap was lying to me. What motive would he have for putting a random stranger's TV package up? We were both friendly to each other, the poor guy probably got soaked on his way into work and is sitting in an office with his shirt stuck to his back, and he gets a friendly voice. Why would he be a difficult a**hole?


So there you have it. Just a few flaws on the myths about calling providers of services. There's loads more, but quite frankly its late and I cannot be bothered. I think you get the jist of it though.

brewerdave

...except that haggling DOES work - even threatening to cancel brings offers -and actually cancelling gets better offers:rotfl::rotfl:

teddysmum

OP, I hope you found your rambling rant therapeutic, but have to tell you that haggling does work.


I haven't had any unsolvable problems with Sky, but this year I'm paying less than half price on my whole package; line,calls, original tv and broadband all for just over £22/month with hardly any effort.