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What I meant by "demand the company accept Plan W", was that you can not force the company to accept your "Plan W" counter offer, but if they do accept "Plan W"
by Crosseye_Jack 5y ago
What I meant by "demand the company accept Plan W", was that you can not force the company to accept your "Plan W" counter offer, but if they do accept "Plan W" you should be able to enforce "Plan W" as long as you can prove that they accepted "Plan W".
In the example I gave in my edit with my own ISP recently, the inital offer they gave me when my contract was coming up to expire was to keep my existing price and level of service, however over the previous year prices for new customers had dropped below what I was paying and a competitor was even lower than my own ISP's new customer pricing (For the same level of service - the pricing diffence wasn't much but it was still there).
So when my contract was due for renewal I called them up (easier to negotiate with a human than a computer) pointed out that a) I was happy with the service they had provided but I was not happy that the price they initially offered to renew was higher than if I was a new customer. b) Because they hadn't offered the price that they gave new customers it incentived me to compare prices elsewhere which lead me their competitor and I was inclided to switch, but suggested that if they sweetened the deal I would stay.
The rep offered a lower price and I said I would agree aslong as they wavied any cancellation charges during the contract. I did say to the rep that I had no plans to cancel unless my street finally gets fibred. It took a bit of wording in the contract, tech speaking the early termination charge is still there however the discount I have cancels out that charge so it would end up being a zero owed balance which I was happy with (Chances are that my street won't get fibred during the remainer of my contract and even if it did I would prob use my existing provider as my fibre provider as they do offer it where its available, so it was a safe bet for the provider and just gave me a bit of reassurance).
My ISP had every right to tell me to go pound sand, my choices would have then been to take the best deal my ISP offered and stay or switch ISPs (which here in the UK has been fine-tuned to a point there is very little downtime, basically for most people its a case of swapping out the ISP issued router, for me it would be configuring my own modem to the new ISP's auth come switch over). Customer retaintion reps usually have a bit of leeway to keep non probmatic customers happy, and tbh I would have been happy if they had just price matched the price they offer new customers, but hey if you don't ask, you don't get :-)