2 Hours Later $60/Month in Savings

In reviewing my internet and mobile phone bills I noticed that the price had started to creep up. Which is funny because when I talk to people about Schooley Mitchell, mobile and internet are usually the examples that I give. You know how the price is one thing when you buy it, then it goes up a little, but not enough to where you want to call and mess with it. Eventually it gets to a point where it is ridiculous, you walk into the store and they put you on a "new" plan that is at the original price that you were paying.

After taking a few minutes to make sure I had my ducks in a row and a good understanding of what had transpired with my bills. I went into my app and looked for a phone number to call someone about reducing the bills. It is probably in a very apparent location, but for the life of me I could not find it. So, instead I went down the route of the chat bot. After a few unsuccessful prompts I was able to get to a live person on chat. Let the negotiations begin.

I started with my internet bill. It is the one that I haven't touched or reviewed the longest. We already had the highest speed available so we didn't have an "upgrade" path. After messaging a few different options they came back and said they could lower our bill $15 per month because we were a "longtime" customer. I did mention that for new customers they had a plan that was about $40 less. The representative put a note in my account and said I could reach back out in 14 days and I could probably get even more off. We will we see what round 2 brings in a couple of weeks.

Next, I started working on the mobile phone bill. They had a few promotions, but none of those made sense to me. Similar to the internet bill they gave $15 off per month, basically just because I asked. We had just moved our phones to this carrier about a year ago, so I wasn't expecting a ton. The area for our mobile bill that really caught my eye was the warranty program. When we originally bought the phones the price was $10/month for them. I hadn't paid attention, but at some point that went up to $12/month and last month it jumped to $15/month. I asked about cancelling or getting rid of this. The agent on the chat said they could not help with this and gave me an 800# to call.

I called the 800# and got the typical message all lines are busy, you can keep your place in line and we will call you back. Call back received. Again the first goal of the agent was trying to get me to upgrade and get another line. For some reason that person was not able to help me with the warranty program, so call to 2nd 800# happens. I spoke with that agent and once again the promotions are what started. In speaking with the agent I shared that I was willing to keep the warranty program, but for the $10/month price that it was originally. It was weird that they didn't really entertain or try to do anything it was basically just a conversation of we can get that cancelled for you. So that is what I did. We had 2 lines with the warranty which meant another $30/month in savings.

This process ultimately has led to to me saving about $720/year which I'm happy about, but it also served as a great example of how my business works. We do a lot of the same things, but for businesses and not personal finances. There are some major differences with what our business does though on helping reduce operating costs.

1. We do the negotiating and work on the phone so you don't have too.
2. Our analysts do this everyday, so even though I found savings, they are often able to find greater savings because they know the right buttons to push.
3. Not only will the analyst speak to the current provider. They will get bids or pricing from other providers as well and confirm that the level of service is the same or better.
4. We review bills monthly, so that those unexpected increases in charges are acted upon immediately instead of letting them add up.

If you are a business owner and you haven't reviewed your bills in awhile. I strongly encourage you to do it. You could find savings in a world where everything seems to be getting more expensive.

If you are crunched for time or have other priorities like running a business and would like to get a 2nd set of eyes with people who do this everyday and on average find 28% savings, reach out to me to see if we can work together on getting some hard earned money back and stop giving it away to vendors.

https://calendly.com/keith-crockett/45minutes?month=2025-01