How to Save Money by Negotiating Your Cable Bill
According to Centris Resesarch, in October 2010 the average monthly household expenses for television were:
- $68 for cable
- $72 for satellite
- $96 for fiber TV
Add in other average costs such as:
- $43 for phone
- $45 for internet
- $97 for wireless
and it’s clear consumers are paying a lot of money each month for communication and entertainment. Today we’d like to provide some links to information that you can use to help you keep more of your hard earned money. If you’re interested in learning what you can do to reduce your bills, spend some time reviewing these strategies to determine what method would be best for your situation.
In a guest post on Get Rich Slowly, G.E. Miller shares his online chat with a Comcast representative and shows exactly how he negotiated a lower cable bill. Miller also shares seven tips on negotiating, including recommendations to do your research and to refer to your competition during your conversation with a service representative. Interestingly, Miller also elected to negotiate over a chat session with Comcast because he heard that the chat session representatives weren’t actually Comcast employees, and may not have had as much of an incentive to tow the company line.
Erica Douglass from Erica.biz shares her strategy to negotiate phone or cable rates by calling and requesting to cancel your service. Douglass offers a six step process to negotiate, including advice not to take the company’s first offer.
eHow also features advice on how to negotiate a lower cable bill. Like the other sites we’ve mentioned, eHow recommends that you do your research and are prepared with offers you are seeing with competing companies. You can easily find information on competitor plans by searching the internet.
To assist you in your research, here are the websites of the major providers in the Milwaukee area:
Have you ever negotiated your cable, satellite, internet, or phone bills? If so, what was your experience like?
Harlem Globetrotters Time Warner Cable Buy One Get One Free Tickets
The Harlem Globetrotters will be at the Bradley Center on New Years Eve for 2 shows at 1:00 P.M. and 6:00 P.M. Time Warner Cable is offering Buy One Get One free tickets with a special discount code. The discount password and Ticketmaster can be accessed by clicking here (you may need to allow pop-up windows in order to see the discount password).
There is also an offer for a free Globetrotters jersey with the purchase of courtside seats or a free Globetrotters backpack with the purchase of any other seats for the show. The backpack and jersey offers aren’t valid with the Time Warner Cable Buy one Get One free offer. Click the link above for the passwords for the jersey and backpack offers.
Thank you to Milwaukee Consumer reader Allen for the heads-up on the code!
Cable and Phone rates are negotiable!
Here is a good reminder to call your cable, satellite, or telcom provider to make sure you are getting the best pricing available for your product. The Wall Street Journal published an article yesterday that profiled a consumer who called AT&T hoping for a 10% discount for his services and ended up with a 50% discount!
Time Warner Cable, the major cable provider in the Milwaukee Metro area, is profiled in the article as well. Their spokesman is quoted as saying “The key is to hang on to every possible customer right now”.
To help get you pointed in the right direction, here’s a link to Time Warner Cable Wisconsin.
Don’t forget this advice applies whether you have high cable, satellite, internet, or telephone bills! Make that call today and make sure you have the best rate possible. Also, if you had a promotional price in the past, or do receive one, make sure you monitor when it expires and start shopping around that time.