I’m in the process of cutting what bills I can. Cable television is one of those things that we consider a luxury, not really necessary to survival. We watch a lot of TV via services like Hulu now anyway.
So I called Comcast and after a few notices about how I shouldn’t worry about the digital conversion and a couple of menu options, I got a very courteous support person. I told her I wanted to cancel my TV portion of my package but keep the internet.
“Sir, may I ask why?”
“Well, unfortunately, I was laid off from my job on Friday, and I need to cut costs as best I can.”
“I’m so sorry to hear that,” she said, sounding really quite genuine. She looked at my account and made a suggestion that I should go to a basic package which would be about $16 a month.
“How much of a total savings would that be, I’m kind of bad at math while on the phone,” I said.
“One moment,” she answered. But before should could give me the total, she added, “You’ve been a good Comcast customer. I’m going to lower your high speed to $19.95, but only for six months. So your total bill would be $40.93.”
“Thank you so much,” I said. “Hopefully I will find a new job in the next six months.”
“I know it’s hard out there,” she said. Then we proceeded to have a chat about her son-in-law looking for a job as well, and then she told me that I really should watch American Idol tonight, and seemed excited that she had saved me the ability to do so. I laughed politely and thanked her.
The first part was nice, nothing unusual. Just a retention specialist doing her job. But when she took down my high speed internet to $19.95 for 6 months, just to help me out, that’s where I was impressed. All told, my cable bill went from $106.23 to $40.93, for a savings of $65.30 for the next six months. And we just lose some TV channels we weren’t watching much of anyway.
Thanks, Comcast. You’ve made my day a lot better by having done this. I appreciate it, and if you folks would just stop messing with BitTorrent traffic, you would have a lifelong customer.
