• @odelik@lemmy.today
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    2 hours ago

    Aboit ten years ago I had XM Radio in my car. Came for free for the first year, then renewed me for $30 for the following year as part of the promo of getting the car. I occasionally used the service for Comedy Central radio and a couple other things, but was largely playing audio off my phone from Spotify/MP3s.

    After those two years an XM rep called me since my subscription was about to expire. They wanted $15/mo or $150 for the year. I laughed and said the most I’d pay would be $50 for a year. They tried to argue with me before I cut them off and told them “Look, here’s the deal. Either you find me some special that brings the price down to that rate and get some money from me or you get no money from me since I’ll be canceling my service. You’re selling a service that I don’t need and has limited benefit to me that my phone hooked up to my car can’t do.”. After a few minutes they found me a special and got approval from their manager. That wound up being my last year of using the service.

    It’s dumb how much publically traded companies try to squeeze their" customers" and staff to drive up value for their true customers, the share holders. It’s such a short term view on life and value.

    • @BlitzoTheOisSilent@lemmy.world
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      338 minutes ago

      Cox did this with my dad, fucked around and found out. To this day, if you bring up Cox Cable, my dad goes, “OH, you mean the company I was a loyal customer to for 32 years, 10 months, and 17 days?!”

      He had one of those cable-internet-landline bundles and was paying something like $150/month for it, something about he just had to call every renewal or something like that. Well, him and my mom fell on some hard times and forgot/missed a payment/something happened with Cox.

      My dad gets the bill the next month, and it says his package is now $300/month (or something ridiculous like that). He calls Cox and wants to know what’s up, why his bill doubled in a month, etc They told him he missed his renewal and thus his promotional price was lost, and now he’s got to do the regular price. He explains what’s been going on and how they’re doing their best, they want to remain a customer, but they’re not paying $300/month for something they were paying $150/month for.

      Cox refused to budge, offering a like $25/month discount at best. So my dad goes, “So, I just want to understand… If I was a new customer creating a new account, you’d give me my old rate? And if I hadn’t missed the thing last month, you’d give me my old rate?” Correct. “So my being a customer of yours for over 32 years… That gets me nothing?!” That’s correct, Sir, so would you like to renew, make any changes, or make a payment?

      “Oh, you can close the account, I’ll be dropping off your equipment in about 3 hours, thank you.” And they still argued with my dad, I think they moved up to $50/month discount, and he just told them to kick rocks, he would rather have no internet, cable, or telephone, than give Cox his money ever again. And to this day, he refuses to recommend Cox to anyone, and tells them to check his file whenever they call or come to the door trying to get him to come back.

    • @WarlordSdocy@lemmy.world
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      11 hour ago

      This reminds me of the people you see in stores who are trying to sell you on a phone plan. I have mint mobile and pay like $15 a month for my plan which has more than enough data. They asked how much I currently pay and I told them it and they just immediately gave up and were like yeah we can’t match that.

    • @dan@upvote.au
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      22 hours ago

      They’ve got a deal that’s three years for $99 but you have to really push them to offer it to you. They say it’s for new customers only but it really isn’t.

  • @Jackthelad@lemmy.world
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    11 hour ago

    The reason some companies do this is because they make a loss on every new customer offer they give out, but it’s designed to just get their custom in the first place. If they offered the same discounts for existing customers, they would go out of business.

    Though if you hassle them enough, you can get something close to a new customer offer.

  • @ChickenLadyLovesLife@lemmy.world
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    73 hours ago

    As a programmer with more than a decade of experience, I got a variant of this principal watching newly-minted and utterly useless CS graduates get hired with a salary higher than mine. Only remedy was to quit and go work somewhere else.

      • @Senseless@feddit.org
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        125 hours ago

        Been 8+ year at the dame ISP. Last year they raised the prices by 11%. Changed providers and pay less for the first year with 4x the download speed. Shortly after I terminated the contract they called me to give me a special offer of 6 months free… I told them I already have a new ISP.

      • @El_guapazo@lemmy.world
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        97 hours ago

        Spectrum capped my threats at 4 years. They refused to negotiate so I cancelled. And committed to that decision.

      • @SkyNTP@lemmy.ml
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        238 hours ago

        Congratulations, you’ve discovered the only negotiating power consumers have ever and will ever have: voting with your wallet.

        Let’s normalize real customer loyalty again by sending a strong message that continued business is not to be taken for granted.

      • Kalkaline
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        2410 hours ago

        Some have figured out that you can threaten but they still won’t budge banking on the status quo bias to keep you with them. Even when faced with competitor pricing they won’t give a discount. Don’t even give them the warning, just leave. Be a well informed consumer.

    • @Blue_Morpho@lemmy.world
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      11 hours ago

      I think it’s designed that way because Sales VP’s get bonuses based on new sales, not retention.

      So there is an unspoken market force that causes service companies to churn customers. Senior executives want you to leave because the competition is doing the same thing.

      All competing companies sales teams benefit from churn as long as all companies work to alienate their customers and make them switch services.

      When I ran an isp I had a customer complaint about new sales being cheaper than loyal customers get forwarded to me. I realized my mistake and cut prices across the board so loyal customers paid the same as new promotions. But very large companies are an old boys club. The CEO isn’t going to piss off his VP of sales so the game goes on.

      • skulblaka
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        244 minutes ago

        That makes way too much sense.

        The infinite growth mindset is the root of all evil

    • GingaNinga
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      1011 hours ago

      At least with telecoms speeds are fast enough now (in my area)that it just doesn’t matter which provider I use so I always go with the discount guys now and its great.

      • @Zwiebel@feddit.org
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        6 hours ago

        Same with phone plans. You either get 50Mb/s for cheap or a fancy “5G 400Mb/s!!!” for three to five times the price that ends up being 100Mb/s in reality anyways

        • GingaNinga
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          26 hours ago

          I can’t stand telecom companies, I bounce around all the time. They ALWAYS have terrible customer service too.

  • @kambusha@sh.itjust.works
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    4611 hours ago

    Never understood this. Study after study tells us how much more it costs to find a new customer, instead of retaining an existing one.

    • @TOModera@lemmy.world
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      1711 hours ago

      It costs more, but those are indirect costs associated with marketing. Most executives only look at sales and expenses and don’t think in indirect costs, regardless of how many business people try to explain. So the costs are marketing, we either cut the costs or we cut the budget, but not change what we are doing. Or they don’t care, because of the above collusion mentioned in another comment, or because they want to spend on marketing for their golf buddy, the marketing CEO.

      Does it drive me insane, as someone who has a marketing and accounting degree, and had to explain it a bunch of times? Yes. Also most high level executives make up a fantasy version of how the business is being run and feel anyone who doesn’t agree is inherently wrong.

  • @Kecessa@sh.itjust.works
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    8 hours ago

    Don’t know how that happened but my bill keeps decreasing and they just gave me an extra 25g of data so I now have 110g for 25$+tx 🤷 I’ve been with the same provider (Koodo in Canada) for years and change plan to get a better one every now and then but it’s usually more data for the same price and I’ve got a 20$ rebate on every bill for some reason…

  • @freedymx@lemmy.world
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    2110 hours ago

    Every 6 months without fail whichever car insurance company I am with raises my rates. My car depreciates in value the whole 6 months and is now less valuable and therefore less costly to replace and yet they raise my premiums. So, every 6 months I have to play this game and switch to another company. Then when you call them to cancel they act disappointed and ask why you want to cancel. Duh!!!