Not long ago, a friend contacted me about her Homeowner’s Insurance. Her company had increased the premium and it was too high for her. I hadn’t really been paying attention to mine, but I had a flyer from another company that had arrived in the mail.
We both called and after comparing companies switched and received a significant price decrease. Yeah! More money in our pockets!
I had noticed something strange on my insurance bill. About 20 years ago, when I got married, we added a flyer for my engagement and wedding rings. It wasn’t that much. We only paid about $3K for the rings, but they appraised a bit higher. Over the years, that flyer increased and I was paying insurance for a $15K worth of jewlery! I thought, gee, those rings just sit in the jewelry box. I’m divorced and never wear them. Why not sell all that stuff? Come to find out, the rings are only worth about $2K today! Talk about overpaying for something.
Thus, I got inspired. I went on a mission examining all my bills. I got to my Internet bill and found pay dirt. I was paying a more per month for a 75/75MB plan than a 1G plan! I called my internet company asking them to reduce my bill since the service was less. They would not reduce my bill. Unfortunately, there is not another high-speed internet company in my area, so I’m limited to one company. Can we say monopoly?
I mulled over the situation and asked, “How much would it cost for me to upgrade to 1G?” No cost. What would my bill be? $30 less! Let’s do it! Two weeks later, the Tech comes out to the house to set me up on my new 1G internet. We tested my internet, and my internet was nicely faster! Yeah. He left, I went to turn on my TV and NOTHING! Just as I was looking up the number to call the company, the tech called me back and said – “Hey, I just noticed you had TV on your service and I didn’t hook that up. Unfortunately, I’ve clocked out for the day, and I won’t be able to get back to you for a few days.”
The soonest I could get a tech out to hook up my TV was two days and that was in case of a cancellation. I started looking at TV services in my area. Guess what? I could get the same service for less money from another company and that company would come out tomorrow and hook me up! After my TV was set up, I called my Internet company and cancelled the TV service. I was pretty happy. I’d effectively reduced my monthly payments by $50.
Then my internet speed started creeping down to a crawl. It was slower than before the upgrade! Another tech needed to come out and of course it was a few days. It doesn’t matter to them that I work from home and if I don’t get internet, I don’t get paid. They don’t care. They have a monopoly!
The tech finally arrives and the first thing he says is, “If the modem shows you have the speed, then there’s nothing I can do. It’s your equipment and that’s on you.” That wasn’t quite the right thing to say to me at that time, but fortunately the modem showed the problem was on their side. Seems the original Tech hadn’t hooked things up quite right. The new Tech fixed the original installation and everything was running smoothly.
Until the storm! My internet went out entirely! At least I had TV. I worked for a few days using my phone as a hot spot. The next Tech was nicer. He checked all the wiring and found where the second Tech had closed the door of the box on a wire outside. Apparently, the storm blew the wire around enough to where it cut the service.
All’s well that ends well – now I have Internet and TV and have lowered my monthly expenditures! But Wait! My security cameras are not connecting to the new Internet! I called my security company and they had me pushing all sorts of buttons, then wanted me to get up on a ladder to check the cameras. I had got these cameras because I didn’t want to get up on a ladder and put batteries in every three months or so.
My security company was going to charge me $65 just to send someone out to get me hooked back up. I politely asked them to turn off my service. Well, that got me over to customer service who took off the $65 charge for the tech to come out AND decreased my monthly bill by another $30.
I think I’m good for a while – sometimes it costs more in frustration trying to save money than to just let it ride.
I’m a nerd when it comes to our budget. I’ve been tracking expenses in a notebook since 2005, which was very helpful at the time of my retirement. Since we moved so much during my career and I tracked utilities and other bills in that notebook, I was able to predict (very closely) how much of my retirement I needed for utilities. Like you said, researching and calling companies is crucial. For instance, I was paying $175 for two unlimited AT&T cell phone lines. After switching to Cricket, I now pay $90 for three unlimited lines. That was a big saving, and it’s crazy how expensive AT&T is.
Agree. I do the same. My Mother was a bookkeeper and I worked with her after I graduated High School. It’s an ingrained habit to pay bills weekly and monitor my monthly budget. That habit also became the most common reason for marital arguments. Lol. But, it kept a roof over our heads and food on the table during lean times.