What’s the best haggle you’ve had?
I’ve just haggled with Virgin Media and got my ‘broadband only’ price down from £37 to £21.
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Wish I could haggle broadband prices. I’m paying £50 a month.
My best ever haggle was my car. Got more for my old car then I expected. 0% on the rest, mats, half a tank of fuel and the warranty rolled back to 7 years (was about 9 months old).
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Have to do virgin media every year 
last year get them down from £57 to £30. It’s a pain in the backside and you have to be 100% prepared to cancel
As soon as you’re out of your 12 month contract, just call them and say “I don’t feel like I’m getting value for money anymore, can you take a look a package and see if there is anything that can be done?”.
Then the offers will come 
Usually a chunky discount if you sign up for another 12 month. Then just stick a reminder in your phone and rinse and repeat 
I do this with most of my providers. Sky are the best. I don’t think I’ve ever paid for the movie channels 
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I often hear about the size of discounts people get with the likes of Virgin, Sky etc.
I’ve cancelled before and get nowhere near the level of discounts others claim to get. I may get offered 20% off at most (if i’m lucky) and then have to go to the hassle of setting up a new account with a competitor because their new customer offers are cheaper than the discount offered.
I feel like I’m doing something wrong, but I’m not sure how if I end up going through with the cancellation.
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I can’t. There’s no-one to switch to. I either have broadband with the one company in my area, or I don’t have broadband. Its a monopoly.
It doesn’t matter, it’s the same for me too. As long as you’re out of your contract they will negotiate.
You don’t threaten them or anything, simply ask if there is any promotions etc as you’ve been “looking” at the new customer deals as well as some competitors and you don’t feel like you’re getting good value for money anymore.
In my experience it’s more how you speak to them. Make them want to help you and be really polite and friendly.
My dad tried it recently. He complained that he was paying too much and asked “what can you do” which is probably not the best way to phrase it. Then when they didn’t adjust it, he said “well forget it, just cancel it” which didn’t help either.
I phoned up 30 minutes later pretending to be him. I got his speed doubled, the data cap removed and £5 off per month.
.
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I got married last year and during the booking of the weeding venue, they had a list of ‘recommended caterers’ that they wanted us to use. The penalty for not using them was a £600 ‘admin fee’. We had already found a caterer we really liked though. So when we were confirming the quote with the caterer, we asked if they could help us out with the admin fee being charged by the venue to sweeten the deal so they agreed to pay half! (£300).
Was pleased with this for a week but then got thinking, what is this ‘admin fee’ covering anyway, so I called the venue to ask, they panicked and offered to half off as a gesture of good will. so now i’ve got the whole £600 fee paid for between them,
A month or so later, the venue and the caterer are meeting to organise everything and I guess they hit it off because a week later they were on the recommended caterers list for the venue and I get a call that the ‘admin fee’ in no longer valid 
.
So all in all, i’ve effectively knocked off £900 the total bill.
It’s always worth challenging arbitrary fees, especially in the wedding trade.
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Oh, don’t get me wrong, I’m polite and friendly, I used to work taking support calls so I know how crap of a job it can be.
The only times I get irate is when they don’t listen to you, like the time I tried to cancel the TV off a Virgin package as it hadn’t been used in about 8 months, and they repeatedly asked me for about 20 minutes (was more like 5 minutes, but add a load of extra time as he kept muting me, I presume to talk to someone else as I wasn’t taking any of his offers, but why would I want something I don’t use?) to keep it for a £5 less a month with no price increases for a year, rather than the £15 i’d have saved by cancelling it outright.
Or the time it took me 40 minutes to cancel my contract with Three as they just refused to let me leave without hearing offer after offer when I’d already switched to a different company.
They’re different situations I guess but my point is, I call cancellations, tell them I want to cancel, they ask why, I tell them it’s too expensive and I can get it cheaper elsewhere and they start offering discounts, but they have never matched or beaten what I can get elsewhere - usually not even close.
This was a quite few years ago, mind you. The last few places I’ve lived, Virgin far outperform BT/Openreach’s infrastructure in terms of speed and reliability. 4G broadband is better than it for speed but not reliability. I may finally get my Virgin line fitted next week (but it’s a Friday afternoon, so probably not!) after 4 months (not including the other 3-4 months the first time I tried getting it installed) of them messing around, wasting days off work waiting around for them and them forgetting they’d done construction work a month ago.
Managed to get £100 credit and £35 a month instead of £55 to not cancel the installation for my 300mb (I think, it’s been so long I’ve forgotten) fibre, but they insisted they install a phone line which I told them was pointless as I won’t be using it but unfortunately they wouldn’t apply the discount without it.
Sweeet!
I was well prepared to cancel (I did in fact).
My bill crept up and up from £24 to £37. I thought this was a mistake as every month the price was different, so I called and was told my loyalty discounts were ending so after each discount ended, the cost went up.
I cancelled and got a cut off date because the best deal the retentions guy could offer was £30 pm.
Then the calls started…
I ignored it at first, not knowing the number, but googled it and realised it was a VM phone number. I left it a few days because I was genuinely cheesed off, and then picked up.
She said the retentions team couldn’t offer the rates that the loyalty could, and asked what deals had I seen elsewhere. She was only really wanting to know if I had been looking elsewhere, because all I said was that there was a great deal that sky were offering and that was it, I had free line installation offered and double the speed for £28 pm.
We don’t need 100mbps (had it before, with no real advantage over 50mbps) so I said I’ll keep what I’ve got and that’s where the £21 came in.
Tell me your secrets!! I need to do the same very soon!
The best deal I’ve had is with Vodafone where they essentially paid me to use their broadband for a month and half. £50 covering the first two months bill and two £100 from complaints. So about £220 ish.
I used to hate haggling, I now see it as a sport. 
Same goes with complaining, if you’ve had shit service don’t just be complacent.
I think the biggest tip is just to think that you are dealing with a human at the end of the day doesn’t matter the size of business, they are doing their job like you do yours to earn a living, so it pays to be calm, polite and friendly.
My current Now Broadband I got a free month without trying from the guy being so happy about Liverpool winning the Champions League. 
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My best ever complaint was with a popular online homeware store.
I was ordering a living room furniture set that was out of stock, they said it would be back in 4 weeks. When I called up next the adviser said it’s always out of stock because they’re made to order so I’d been lied to.
I complained that they’d lost my trust and I was no longer prepared to place the order, so they gave me a £100 voucher as compensation to buy something “small” so I could see how good they were.
I placed the order for the living room set and received a delivery date. It got delayed for 1 week so after another complaint I got 10% off (£200).
The furniture set arrived and 1 item was missing. Another complaint logged and they gave me another 10% off (£180) .
They tracked the item and it had got lost somewhere in their warehouse so they decided to reorder it. Upon looking they found that they couldn’t reorder just the one item. They had to re-order the entire set which they let me keep.
Now I have two furniture sets so onto ebay it went 
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I got my Virgin Media TV/Broadband/Phone package down from £83 to £41 for six months, then 46. However, that was just the promise. The execution of that promise was one of the most dreadful and frustrating experiences I’ve ever had with a company online.
Virgin Media incorrectly keyed in the contract they’d agreed, which meant they got my first bill wrong. Then to compensate, they didn’t take anything by Direct Debit the second month. Then since they hadn’t taken any payment for that month, their finance team reported me to the credit agency for not paying them.
A total of 20 calls to date - over 18 hours - and they’re still getting my bill wrong. I raised a complaint, and they initially offered me £5.
I don’t know which idiot is running that company, but they have every reason to feel a deep sense of shame 
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We tried Virgin media for one year never again they are so far behind sky it is unreal, granted internet faster but still, had them call up once a day for the last 2 asking why we left back in July, will never go back to them.
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We left sky a few years ago and in the space of a month had 3 different mail shots from 25% - 75% discounts if we rejoined
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My best haggle was with sky had lots of issues so left, then they sent me a come back offer everything for £50 rang and said don’t bother sending me no more not interested… then managed to get all the channels for £22.50 per month 
I am in the process of awaiting management call back for TUI after a disgusting email back from their welfare team, see if I can get the remainder of the balance paid £850 as compo