We are (or I should say were) approaching the end of the contract on our cell phone service and have been out of contract on our DirectTV for a while. I've been looking at options including switching to save a little money. This week I learned that may not be the best way to save.
My first call was to Sprint to try and change our cell phone plan to one with fewer minutes since we rarely use even 1/2 the minutes we have, including my business use. They wouldn't do it without extending our contract 2 years which I didn't want because I could save a lot more long term by switching (but with having to go through a lot of hassle and paying early termination fees on our data card.) I asked for Customer Retention and they offered me a plan with MORE minutes than I had and cut my voice plan cost by $40 or in HALF.
The second call was to DirecTV. I didn't do as well there since Dish and DirecTV are pretty competitive and we don't have cable here. I showed the DirecTV rep that I could save $10 and get DVR in two rooms instead of 1 by switching to Dish. That resulting in a $10/mo credit to our bill per month for 1 year. They also offered me a free DVR for the second room but I would have had to pay a $20 shipping/handling fee. It wasn't worth it me since that would have also meant programming two DVRs and the second wouldn't get used that much.
About 90 minutes on the phone and the words "Customer Retention Department" saved me $600 over the next year.
I still need to call Verizon and see what I can do on our POS land line from the 40's that now costs us more than two 21st century cell phone lines. I'd drop it if we didn't need it for the alarm and DirecTV (which I could probably switch to my buisiness line since they don't incur toll charges,) and if we got a little better cell phone reception in the house.