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shopping around

A forum for matters involving finance (incl. business and money issues) and shopping (incl. consumer rights).
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unc.si.
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shopping around

Post by unc.si. »

after getting virgin down from their proposed renewal of £102 a month to £44 a month for the same services, I've moved my sights onto the AA.

went up a lot because I added my daughter during the year (she broke down and it was cheaper to add her and get the AA to come out than to pay for a tow home), but the renewal jumped massively.

rang to get a revised renewal quote to take her off again (she's in London and no car any more), but the renewal proposal was still £360. I did patiently explain that if I was a new customer it would only cost £180 for the same level of cover, as would me going to the RAC. That was straight from their website with no mention of it being an introductory offer at a big discount, so why were they treating existing customers as less valuable than new ones?

after about 10 minutes of them insisting that I was still a valued customer and 'finding deals they could give me' it wasn't coming down a lot so I told them if they didn't get it down to £180 I would cancel. So when they said they couldn't do that I cancelled and signed up with the RAC.

They did say they could put me through to their manager to see whether they could do a special deal, and they would have got to £180 eventually (same happened with virgin but it took me 2 weeks of calls to get there), but its only breakdown cover and the RAC are effectively identical for my needs, so life's too short and its easier to swap

anyway - moral of the story - never accept renewal quotes for anything and shop around

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murf
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Re: shopping around

Post by murf »

Think that has recently been banned with car insurance which is a start but I just don't get why companies don't treat 'valued customers' with common decency. AA are one of the worst, I've got them to come done several times at renewal time with a call.
Easy to switch with electricity and gas etc (which are also some of the worst). When a contract ran out with a company once I went to a comparison site and the best deal was from the company I was already with but were they switching me to that tariff?..... no, of course not.

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unc.si.
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Re: shopping around

Post by unc.si. »

The main reason they don't is that a lot of people just renew, so they make a lot of money from the lazy, which outweighs the revenue from the few customers they lose.

if enough people do make a fuss and switch then things will change. Intro offers will probably be slightly less favourable they are now but you won't be forced to constantly battle to get the best deal.

I did hear about it being banned for insurance, which is a good start. will be interesting to see what happens with that in practice. I suspect that the lazy will be protected and do better and the proactive switchers will lose out (relative to now) as average prices gravitate towards a median position.

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unc.si.
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Re: shopping around

Post by unc.si. »

I did some consultancy work for a mobile phone co a few years back (probably about 10 years ago). They made a lot of cash from what they called 'sleepers'. People who were still paying the full tariff after their 3 year contract period was over. The payment was for the network charge and the cost of the handset, so after the handset was paid off that element of the price that sleepers kept paying was pure additional profit, even ignoring the price increases that they could impose on out of contract customers.

Not sure they're allowed to do that any more to be honest, but used to be common practice

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murf
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Re: shopping around

Post by murf »

unc.si. wrote:I did some consultancy work for a mobile phone co a few years back (probably about 10 years ago). They made a lot of cash from what they called 'sleepers'. People who were still paying the full tariff after their 3 year contract period was over. The payment was for the network charge and the cost of the handset, so after the handset was paid off that element of the price that sleepers kept paying was pure additional profit, even ignoring the price increases that they could impose on out of contract customers.

Not sure they're allowed to do that any more to be honest, but used to be common practice
That was me a few years back, just let it drift.

With my current phone the deal was that they cut the price after 3 years. Not sure if that was a marketing ploy or enforced by law but I'm now, 3 and a half years later, paying a lot less.

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