i'm one of those people who just accepts the price or the fee or the interest rate for what it is. i don't like to barter. i just pay. so for the past 4 or 5 years, i've had the Gold BMO Airmiles credit card - i originally paid the annual fee for the gold card because if you had a gold card, you could fly anywhere in north america for only 1600 points! a wicked deal. unfortunately, we aquire points very very slowly and eventually, BMO changed their golden deal to a much less awesome deal. but i just kept paying my annual fee. we're barely making airmiles and we're not getting anything special plus we're paying money for it. so a couple weeks ago, i signed up for a PC Financial card that will at least get me some free groceries. that seems a little more tangible for us at this time in our lives.
today, i called BMO to cancel my card. i talked to steve who said that i should just change to the other airmiles card that has no fee. i said no. he told me he'd have to get a "relationship manager" to cancel my account. okaay... so then i spoke to dominic, the relationship manager. he said that he can see i've been a customer for awhile. why don't i change to the airmiles card that has no fee AND he'd make my interest rate 10% instead of 19.5%. what? that's huge! uhh...okay. so now i still have my airmiles card and a great interest rate.
what else can i call and pretend to cancel so that i'll get a better rate? shaw definitely has us tied around their little finger...maybe them...
7 comments:
I call Shaw about once a year to cancel our services. Every single time without fail, they've offered me a deal so sweet, I can't pass it up. The last time we got Internet, Basic Cable and our phone line for less than $50. Call them now!
Way to go with your customer service dealing skills. ;) Thanks so much for the visit today and the tip for the bread. :)
We're at a 6% interest rate.... yes 6%.. and no fees with our Canadian Tire MasterCard. No one can beat it. Everyone is amazed when I tell them the rate...and actually it just went up to six. It was 5.5!!!
I had a similar experience last fall when I called Telus. I was calling to cancel our home phone line, as Dallas and I were satisfied with just our cell phones. It had gotten to the point where we were rarely even checking the voicemail on our home phone, which didn't go over well with people who were trying to track us down.
It was a lengthy call to cancel the home phone, similar to your experience I got transfered to the "loyalty department." The lady was trying to convince me to keep our landline, which cost us $30 or so per month. She even got to the point where she asked me what I would consider paying. I made a joke about it being free, and then said, "if it's $10 I would consider keeping it." She couldn't go that low (our only other service with Telus is our internet), but she was pretty keen to keep our business. Anyways, then she starts talking about getting us a new modem for our internet, and upgrading us to the highest speed they have (or something like that) and I was like, "a new modem? what's that going to cost?" FREE. That's what it cost. I was confused - I hadn't called about the internet, and ended up with a new free modem. Random.
PS - there was a bunch of episodes on Oprah recently that talked a lot about what you experienced. Calling credit card companies to get lower rates, etc. The episodes were part of a series called the Debt Diet - apparently there is info on her website about it. I don't watch much Oprah anymore, but the DD shows were quite interesting. Check it out!
steve once called shaw and said that we wanted to cancel our cable and we were gonna get satellite instead (even though we couldn't because we lived in a condo). he told them all about how they are inferior to satellite...blah blah blah....and they kept offering him more and more stuff. we ended up getting our PVR for free for a year and then we would return the PVR or buy it at a "used" price (50% off). so we did that.
This is hilarious because the exact same thing happend to us with the BMO Gold airmiles card. When the fee kicked in we jumped out, but down the regular master card airmiles card. Did you know you actually collect a lower amount of airmiles per dollar you spend? I think with the gold you got 20 miles to the dollar. Now with the regular one you get 15 miles to the dollar.
My thought on the interest rate though... I never care what it is because I never need to utilize it - I always pay the bill! I guess if people don't pay the bill they care about the interest rate.
Another thought... as for Telus! Hate them! Will never look back. Shaw all the way. We had telus while living in white rock and I've never experienced so many problems with internet connections in my life! And the telus TV was even worse. I kid you not, we and the balouns had to have them come in (no exaggeration here for reals) at least 8-10 times and the problems still were not resolved.
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