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.
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.
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.
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.
Nowadays reliability and coverage is actually the selling point.
They may all have enough speed, but usually the expensive ISPs are more reliable. Mostly because the "cheap ISP"s are just the expensive ones in a trenchcoat selling excess bandwidth. But when the excess bandwidth is no longer excess, the cheap ones are the first to be cut off.
So if you don’t need 99.99…% uptime, the cheap ones are much better.
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
Having to switch services every year seems to be the way these days.
You really just have to threaten them with switching in my experience. Then you can often get the same discounts.
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.
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.
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.
Spectrum capped my threats at 4 years. They refused to negotiate so I cancelled. And committed to that decision.
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.
That makes way too much sense.
The infinite growth mindset is the root of all evil
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.
Nowadays reliability and coverage is actually the selling point.
They may all have enough speed, but usually the expensive ISPs are more reliable. Mostly because the "cheap ISP"s are just the expensive ones in a trenchcoat selling excess bandwidth. But when the excess bandwidth is no longer excess, the cheap ones are the first to be cut off.
So if you don’t need 99.99…% uptime, the cheap ones are much better.
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
I can’t stand telecom companies, I bounce around all the time. They ALWAYS have terrible customer service too.