Here’s a secret for anyone with a cellphone, cable or satellite television, or an Internet-connected computer: Call and threaten to cancel your service.
Your provider may shower you with free minutes or channels, cash rebates or even a new cellphone or digital video recorder.
Denver resident Dan Samenus called Comcast to complain that Direc TV’s service was $30 a month cheaper. To his surprise, Comcast slashed $30 off his $80 monthly bill and threw in five premium Showtime channels.
Samenus did not give up when the deal expired four months later. He called again and again to have the deal extended for a year. But on the fourth call, Comcast balked. He instead snatched up DirecTV’s NFL package plus 50 premium channels for $97 per month.
“I was sorry to have to pull the guillotine on Comcast,” Sam e nus said. “But Direc TV was very tempting.”
Savvy consumers like Samenus have discovered they can take advantage of the fierce and growing competition among big-name companies to provide phone, subscription TV and Internet service.
The companies employ retention specialists in their call centers who have the authority to offer special deals to entice customers to stay.
“If you are able to retain a customer, you don’t have to spend several hundred dollars to add a new one,” industry analyst Tom Friedberg said.
And companies that successfully retain customers for the long term will recoup many times the amount they offer in special deals.
“The onus is on the consumer to get the best deal for themselves,” Consumer Reports spokeswoman Lauren Hackett said. “In my personal experience, companies are putting little tiny crumbs out until they have to put the whole turkey on the table.”
Companies rarely talk about retention deals, which have been used for years by long-distance phone providers and credit- card companies.
“That is not a normal practice,” Comcast spokeswoman Cindy Parsons said, referring to Samenus. “I am not sure how he circumvented the system on that one.”
Parsons said Comcast’s retention strategies revolve around new offerings such as video-on-demand.
“We are as focused on retaining customers as we are adding new ones,” said Anne Marshall, spokeswoman for cellphone provider Cingular. “But we don’t want to give our strategies away.”
Qwest, the Denver-based phone provider, is offering rebates of $13 to $20 a month for a full year to customers who call to cancel Qwest DSL high-speed Internet service. The rebates, which vary according to state and type of DSL, run through Oct. 8, according to a July regulatory filing.
“We place a high value on the experience of every one of our customers,” Qwest spokesman Michael Dunne said.
When Denver resident Peter Pak negotiated a new T-Mobile cellphone contract for his wife, the company was offering a new BlackBerry for $299.
He haggled the price down to $50.
“I went through two layers of management and kept saying, ‘That’s not good enough,”‘ Pak said. “Finally, someone with enough authority offered us the deal.”
Word of such deals spreads slowly but surely. Pak told a friend about the $50 BlackBerry, and the friend then got a similar deal for himself.
“These strategies are effective for the consumer,” said Greg Kahn, a consumer expert with Kahn Research Group in Charlotte, N.C. “But in the long term, I don’t know how effective it is for businesses. After a while, you get consumers that play one company off another.”
Kahn himself received a free digital video recorder after threatening to cancel his his DirecTV service. He then canceled his local phone service but was lured back by BellSouth with a $100 Visa cash card.
America Online paid hefty bonuses to retention consultants who persuaded more than 50 percent of their canceling customers to stay. Those bonuses led some call- center workers to simply ignore customer cancellation requests, according to a $1.25 million settlement AOL reached last month with New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer.
Lakewood resident Kristi Sanders, like many consumers, is not even aware such retention deals exist.
“Nor do I have the time or desire to investigate,” she added.
“A lot of people are just accepting of what they have,” Yankee Group analyst Amanda Sabia said. “For the average consumers, it’s a lot of investigative work. Their eyes gloss over.”
But her eyes light up.
Sabia, who lives in Rye Brook, N.Y., plans to get a rebate on her cable high-speed Internet service that she heard about through a network of neighbors.
She previously struck deals with Cablevision to get free HBO for 18 months.
“I milked it for all it was worth,” she said. “It was easy.”
Staff writer Ross Wehner can be reached at 303-820-1503 or rwehner@denverpost.com.
Advice from the pros
Negotiating a better deal from your subscription television, cellphone or Internet provider requires knowledge, a bit of time and a lot of gumption. Tips from people who have wrangled everything from cash rebates to free digital video recorders:
Educate yourself: “Shop around and go to the providers’ websites and see what promos they have,” Gartner Research analyst Amanda Sabia said. “You have to know what the competition is offering.”
Threaten to leave: “All you have to say is you are canceling the service, and they will beg for your business,” consumer consultant Greg Kahn said.
Shoot for the moon: “Just ask. They don’t want to lose you,” Consumer Reports spokeswoman Lauren Hackett said. “You can negotiate for just about anything.”
Ask for a manager: “If you get stuck, there’s always someone with authority who seems to be able to do more,” said Denver cellphone customer Peter Pak, who finagled a BlackBerry device for $50.
Be tough: “Be willing to pull the trigger on leaving,” Denver satellite-television subscriber Dan Samenus said. “Be hard but friendly.”
ROSS WEHNER
