Are you tired of paying so much for your Comcast cable or internet service? Have your promotional rates just ended, or have your Comcast rates been on the rise? If so, it is fairly easy to negotiate with Comcast for better service rates if you keep a few negotiation tactics in mind.The first thing to keep in mind when negotiating with Comcast is that they will strive to keep you as a customer at all costs. It costs Comcast more money to recruit a new customer than it does to offer you discounted services. This doesn't mean that you should automatically threaten to cancel your Comcast service, but it does give you a sense of why Comcast is usually willing to negotiate with you.
The second thing to keep in mind is that you should avoid "yes or no" questions. If you ask a simple question such as "Can you give me a discount on my service?" it is too easy for the Comcast customer service representative to reply with a "no." (Although Comcast is usually willing to negotiate, the representative is not going to make it that easy for you!)
Instead, ask open-ended, leading questions such as "How can you work with me to bring my rate plan down to an acceptable level?" or "What promotional rates are currently available for my level of service?" Asking these open-ended, leading questions makes it much more difficult for the Comcast representative to decline your request without appearing to offer poor customer service.
It usually helps to be somewhat saccharine in your request, indicating how happy you have been with the service and how much you want to remain with Comcast due to their excellent customer service. If worse comes to worse, you could threaten to leave Comcast and take your business elsewhere. But this should be a last resort when negotiating with Comcast, and you will likely find that the Comcast representative will crumble very easily and be happy to find you a better rate plan. If you have not yet called Comcast to negotiate your service fees, I would put money on the fact that you are overpaying for your service.
The discount you receive may not be much. For example, I recently negotiated my Comcast Triple Play service fees down to $204 per month from $230 per month. It doesn't sound like much, but I was happy with the level of service and simply wanted the current promotional rate instead of having to pay full price. A five-minute conversation later, and I received the promotional rate, no questions asked.
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9 comments:
This kind of negotiation works everywhere, not just with Comcast. I have a mechanic that I will be returning to next time I need repairs, not just because they did good work, but because when they gave me a quote for some recent (unplanned) repairs I said, "That's about $200 more than I was hoping to spend. What can we do to lower that cost and still get the work done?" It ended up being a compromise; they discounted the price of the repairs by about $200 and I went ahead and had my brakes done early (I was planning to have the pads replaced in about a month anyway).
The other example is with medical providers: although often the answer is "We don't give discounts to anyone with insurance coverage," my wife and I always ask whether the provider will give a discount for paying our full balance right away. Just over the past six months, that has saved us almost $800 in out-of-pocket expenses.
At any rate, the point is that it is always valuable to negotiate, not just with Comcast, because the end result is often a win-win situation. The mechanic, the doctor, and the hospital know that they can look forward to my repeat business and prompt payments, and Comcast can look forward to keeping you as a customer, all because we asked for and received a better price than we were initialy charged.
Rats. * Initially.
Hi Brian! You are absolutely right that the negotiation tips here (and others) are broadly applicable to any sort of negotiations, whether they are prices for services or negotiating a raise in your salary.
I particularly like your example about asking for a discount for paying a balance in full right away. I wonder whether this approach would work with credit card balances as well.
The "discount" obtained by paying off the credit card is NO MORE INTEREST!!
Best advice for me: Dont't use the credit card for any item you cannot pay off in a month!!
Yes, I realize there are exceptions but putting a strangle hold on spending for unnecessary items is important!!
Many items we think we need become superflous after 6 months or so.
I agree these tactics work with any company. What I would suggest would be to switch to a provider where you do not have to haggle the price down. As a DISH Network employee I know that DISH offers the lowest everyday pricing in the industry. As well as being the best in customer service over all cable and satellite providers last year. In my opinion it makes more sense to switch to a company who will treat you fair and have a great price, then having to agree to commitments to get credits with a company charging you too much already.
I say the best negotiation for lower fees is to find a new provider. I used to have Comcast and their fees have grown to the point that a lot of people are opting to skip the DVR, let alone an HD DVR. I have a DISH Network employee account where I only pay fees, but my first two rooms with an HD DVR are free, no fees other than the DVR fee for $6. It’s been that way since DISH invented the two room receiver, and that is a clear advantage over Comcast’s fees. My DVR has 55 hours of HD recording and 300 hours of standard, far more than any Comcast DVR.
I know it's an older post but just have to say that I came upon this entry as I prepared for my semi-annual negotiations with Comcast around the promotional rates that go away. The leading question angle is great, thanks.
What I always find helpful (and just did again moments ago) is sympathize with the customer service rep at some point in the call. In the middle of the negotiation I said that I knew it wasn't the guy answering the phone's fault, he's just doing his job and happened to get me on the line, but this is disrespectful on Comcast's part to treat new customers like gold and long-standing ones like me like crap, so if this means I have to go to another company then so be it.
Two minutes later I had all the increases removed and am paying 5 dollars less than before! Well worth a bit of negotiation.
Anyway, great post.
Wow, the Dish TV people infested the comment section of this website. I had Dish for 5+ years & just dumped them after they refused to do much anything for me, a perfect payee of $108/month for almost nothing. I got so much more from Direct TV, & the quality is improved. I wouldn't even consider Comcast for TV service- they're horrible to deal with & the quality can't match satellite. They are the only good choice in my area for internet- though not for long, competitors on the horizon. Comcast is toast.
Comcast...did you hear about the new fee to change your service? $5 to ask for Comcast to remove a channel which was provided as a promotion. Kind of like taking a car for a test drive and being told that it will cost you $20 to do so.
I had a great time today calling to remove a service. I was informed that the wait to remove a service was 3-5 minutes. 20 minutes later, still on hold. Funny thing, called back and selected the option to add a service and guess what. I was connected to a rep in less tah. 1 minute.
Got to love monopolies.
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