So Facebook has decided to buy WhatsApp. I am not sure whether a price tag of $19 Billion is in the ‘Highly Overpriced Zone’ or not. But atleast Mark Zuckerberg seems convinced with this mobile messenger’s ability to boost Facebook’s earnings in near future.
Talking of mobile apps and services, I just realized that one of Stable Investor’s core discussion areas was to be Common Sense.
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| Saving Money is all about Common Sense. Isn’t it? |
And due to my ignorance, I had completely forgotten about it. But, going forward, I will try to make amends and write frequent posts on money saving tips, which would be based on simple common sense and little smart thinking.
Today’s tip can help you reduce your mobile phone bills. And almost all of us, at some point or the other, feel that we are overpaying service providers for our mobile services.
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| Tip to reduce the shock of seeing your mobile bills!! |
Now Indian mobile companies take huge loans to buy spectrum and have high costs of customer acquisition. And with not-so-delightful services, they are susceptible to lose those costly customers. And this is where you can save money.
Companies always know that its cheaper to retain an existing customer than to get a new one. So this is what needs to be done –
- Research the costs of plans similar to ones used by you, but provided by competitors.
- Call your mobile service provider
- Ask them if they have any better plans to offer you?
- Tell them what other companies are offering you.
- And tell them that you are ‘thinking’ of switching to a competitor, who is providing cheaper & better plans.
And bingo!
The company almost surely would provide you something better than what it was offering earlier. A cheaper or a better plan! And if you are a high usage customer, just think about the savings you can make using this ‘slightly-evil’ approach. 😉
Give it a try and let me know if it worked for you. I did for me. 🙂
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Good article.Thanks!
Hi Dev,
This is indeed an evil plan ;).
I have been using this plan since last year to reduce my broad band bill. Every three months I send a “threat” mail to my broadband service provider to cancel my plan. They would call me to know the reason and I would say that competitors provide me better services and prices. And I want to migrate to a competitor. After that, the real fun begins ;). They would offer me “Retention Plans” by providing me better offers at affordable rates :).
That's a great Idea Sirji.
Are internet plans portable?
I applied this idea 6 month back and reduced my mobile bill from 800-900 rs to 300-400 Rs…. 🙂 . Now thinking to even reduce current bill to 200-250 level…
Ha ha
Evil indeed. 🙂
The idea is to force these service providers to service our concerns via customer retention departments instead of customer care departments.
;-p
Any subscription based service is a possible candidate.
That's great. Do let me and readers know of your experiences when the same happens.
Glad you liked it Asmita. 🙂