All Services Are Negotiable

Saturday, August 26, 2006

Insurance--Primo Ripoff (Pt. 2)

So I talked to my insurance carrier today, and learned several valuable lessons.

First, the rep was very open about the fact that they are willing to make retroactive changes to your policy, depending on the type of change. Specifically, if your car has been sold or totalled (as was my case in Pt. 1), they will freely make retroactive changes and cut you a check. This only makes sense, and would likely incite riots if untrue.

Second, my current carrier must just have really bad rates for the type of coverage I need, because they weren't able to do much for me. Their loss.

I spoke recently with a friend who knows the insurance industry very well, who told me that since I deal directly with the insurance carrier, instead of through an agent, the odds of me getting any real deal were pretty slim. Great insight; proven, at least in part, correct. See, if I had an agent who received a commission based on my policy, s/he would be much more interested in appeasing me, given his/her stake in my business.

In the end, I raised my deductible to gain some savings, but rest assured that I will be hunting for two things in the coming months:
  1. An insurance carrier that has much more competitive rates for my insurance needs.
  2. An agent to represent me with the carrier. This will not only give me a face to discuss my policy with, but will also give me significantly more leverage in the event that I need to make changes to my policy.

Tuesday, August 22, 2006

Insurance--Primo Ripoff

I have two cars. My wife drives one, and I drive the other, but only when my wife is out with the other car and I can't get where I need to go by bus or bicycle. Why am I paying for insurance on that other car? Because it's illegal for me not to.

That shouldn't stop me from paying the absolute minimum necessary to cover myself in the event of an accident. Let's face it: if I get into an accident where I really need insurance, a really low deductible is pretty worthless. So this weekend, I plan on raising my deductible and decreasing my monthly premium. I realize that's not especially groundbreaking.

I am however going to see if I can convince my insurance carrier to retroactively refund me the difference in the premium for the last couple months. Sound a little brazen? Maybe, but it's based on a real experience I had with them a couple years ago...

My car was totalled, and it took me about three months to cancel the insurance on the old car (we prepay our policy in six month increments). When I finally got around to it, the thought occurred to me that I'd paid for three months of insurance that really wasn't needed; would they refund me? I asked, and they complied. The kicker is that the rep asked me how many months back I'd like my refund for. I'm not sure how far back I could have gone--I didn't pull any fast ones or anything.

Saturday, August 19, 2006

And Another Thing About Cable Companies...

If your cable company is anything like mine, they don't give a rip. So...

Refuse to pay installation fees:

If you live in an apartment building that's wired for cable, it's no skin off the cable company's nose to simply turn on your jack.

Take advantage of the company's lackadaisical attitude:

At one time, a friend and I, living in separate buildings, each had the basic cable television package, sans Internet access. Being technical guys, we hooked our cable modems up to our respective cable jacks anyway, and to our surprise, found a legitimate cable Internet signal coming through our pipes.

Being honest folk, we called the cable company to report that our service had not been set to exclude the cable Internet signal. Their response was that to do so would pollute their network, and it was worth more to them to leave our service unfiltered and our accounts uncharged than to actually provide us the service that we subscribed to.

Get a Better Cable Deal

One of my absolute favorite services to renegotiate is my cable contract, for several reasons:

  • They are constantly sending me offers for better deals in the mail.
  • They charge exorbitant rates for something that's not really that valuable, and they know it.
I have a friend who used to work for AmeriCorps, and lived in a house of AmeriCorps workers, and they really couldn't afford cable or a broadband Internet connection. I suggested that they just give the cable company a call to see what it would do for them, "And don't hesitate to use your status as leverage."

A few weeks later, I heard back from my friend. She had to call several times, but eventually found someone at the cable company who listened to her plea.

"How much can you pay?" he asked.
"Nothing, really," she said.

That was good enough for him. She walked away from the call with free expanded cable television and cable Internet access for a year.

A year later, as her deal was about to expire, she lamented the imminent loss of her free services. I suggested that she just call the cable company again to see if they would be willing to extend her deal.

She did. They were. Now she's got another free year of cable.

Sunday, August 06, 2006

Expect Errors!

In an earlier post, I expressed that one of the most important character traits of a good negotiator is persistence. If there's one thing that experience has shown me, it's that when negotiating, the parties involved often forget the details of the new deal. Chock it up to the rush you'll get from exercising your newfound purchasing power, and the rush your adversary gets from satisfying you.

Case in point: my new cell phone plan. I received two pieces of mail recently. First was my bill for the coming month's service under the new plan; second was the confirmation of the details of my new plan. Nevermind the backwards order in which these communiques arrived; I had significant issues with both of them. The former, because it claimed I owed my provider about twice what I was expecting under the new deal, and the latter, because several provisions agreed upon under the new deal were conspicuously absent.

To make a long story short, the errors were due to two specific blunders:
  1. The provider did not apply the new plan to both phones on our account, resulting in $60+ in overage charges.
  2. I made the mistake of negotiating the new plan in the middle of a billing cycle. This one makes me feel like a newbie.

To sum up, expect your new service details to take a little ironing out once the ball is rolling. As sad as it sounds, expecting the worst from your providers. That way, if your expectations aren't met, you'll be pleasantly surprised. Also, take copious notes on both the old deal, the new deal, and all aspects of the negotiation. Keep a running journal. It will serve you as vital documentation when problems reveal themselves. Finally, wait until the very end of a billing cycle before you make your move. This serves the twofold purpose of preventing sticky grey-area errors, as well as making such errors much easier to detect. I am positive that, had I waited until the end of my billing cycle, I would have at least avoided the half-hour it took me to track down the mistakes.