I just got off
phone with a company that provides me a service for which I pay $600 each month.A couple of days ago I received a letter from them saying that due to economic factors, cost increases, blah, blah, blah they were going to raise my rate by a "modest amount".
Ok, so what do they consider a modest amount? I called them and found out that to them a modest amount was 8-10%; they weren't sure yet.
I don't know if their definition of a "modest amount" struck me wrong or if I was just against paying more for this service, but I took time to look in phone book and find two of their direct competitors.
I called each competitor and got price quotes on exact same service.
As you probably can guess, I found some lower prices (without even mentioning what I was currently paying). And it turned out that both of competitors were priced about same.
I then called my current provider and mentioned that their competitors would give me a price of $500 for same service; $100 less! They said that they would research it and call me back.
I got a call a few hours later saying they wanted to keep my business and would be happy to match their competitor's price. I gave myself a pat on back.
But I started thinking about how my current provider intended to raise my monthly rate by about $50 but ended up cutting their rate by $100. So rather than creating an additional $600 of cash for themselves next year, they are now going to take $1,200 less.
