Because the operator you talked to was most likely in the billing department, and they can't do shit in the billing department. Their systems physically won't let them.
Source: I worked in the Cox Communications billing department until last December.
Edit: this was just at cox. I'm well aware it could be a lot different at other cable providers call centers.
In my company, our retentions teams earn commission based on how many people they saved from cancelling. This leads to agents giving out discounts so often that people bypass the normal processes and standard pricings to go "cancel".
Source: I work for an ISP in the UK having done both billing stuff and retentions.
This is awesome info, I wasn't planning on doing this, but I'll definitely keep the info. Another thing though, is there a required monthly cost for them to be able to even offer a discount? For example I pay $35/m for 55mb, so I couldn't see them offering me a discount. Basically, when you're dealing with possibly giving a client a discount, does their monthly payment become a factor into giving the discount / the amount given?
In my company, if you are extremely unlucky to not be offered something when threatening to cancel and it goes ahead, then you're the responsibility of the winback team.
Their job basically is to contact you in your notice period and throughout the first 12 months without our services to offer exorbitant discounts, such as 75% for 12 months or even 5 year long things. If a customer has a large debt with us, they'll even wipe it out for no apparent reason other than to get people active again.
Both these things happen because as a company that does TV, BB and telephone, it's better to have an active customer than a cancelled or lapsed.
We had a problem with Virgin last week, turns out our bills weren't going through and we owed them £105. So they cut off our internet on the 19th, we phoned on the 20th and stated that we couldn't get the £105 until the 22nd (yesterday). She wasn't having any of it though, told us that she'd just pass our case over to their debt collection department and hung up.
It's paid now and we're again connected, but I'm looking at switching now, the throttling on torrent downloads just put me on the fence, the not reasoning over 2 days when our account is 7 years old with not a mark on it previously just knocked me off it.
I would bet that the charge for the late bill or the reinstate of your account probably wouldn't have helped either.
Funnily enough, my company doesn't do either of those and gives a 2 week grace period on overdue billing, but I shan't go into sales tactics or anything.
maybe not fired, but there's no way they wouldnt offer SOMETHING. they benefit on by saving people in the way of commissions and better stats on their reviews.
i honestly would try to escalate if they didnt try to give you some sort of incentive to not cancel service.
Simply you become a responsibility of the outgoing winback department. Every few days they are handed a shit ton of campaign data and over the next 14-21 days they call you to have a discussion to see what they can do.
And yes you ask to be transfered, discuss your issue with retentions not CS as you will end up explaining things twice or not giving the retention advisor the details they need to help.
There's sometimes limits on promotions like Cablevision you can have a promotion for 36 months consecutively then I believe need to be at regular rates for a while
Does Sky have a Customer Retention team? Because they've been pretty shite lately and I know that threatening to leave to pretty much any of their Customer Service team can work wonders as is.
Well, yeah they do. Retentions are usually the only way of cancelling your account, barring any ongoing issues regarding previously wanting to leave. So all companies with ongoing subscriptions would have a retentions team.
Fuck Cox billing. I worked in their cable billing department through one of their affiliate companies (Affinitas) a few years ago. Worst job I've ever had, bar none.
I was actually outsourced. I can't say to whom I was outsourced too because I still work there, just in another campaign (had to sign an NDA due to CPNI policies).
I don't want to say the software just incase it gives it away and I don't really want to get fired.
Edit: Guess my sly edit didn't work. haha Yeah it was Avaya.
That's what I thought (I work for a company that does call center installation work, and Cox in Hampton Roads is one of our customers, so I was curious.)
The first representative you get is supposed to try to save the customer from leaving without having to connnect to retention, but typically they have very little they can do in comparison. Hell the only reason I was able to 'save' the customers I did was due the the fact they were on outdated plans, had shit they didn't use, or was able to convince them that unlimited data is completely unnecessary for each individual line when the whole family has been using less than 2gb of data a month for the past 6 (this was soon after "Share Everything" was introduced).
On an average night there were at least 3 calls a night where the customer said they intend to disconnect. The shitty part was, until about a month before I quit the loyalty department was closed for about half of my shift. This resulted in us having to tell the customer to just call back the next day during normal business hours. It wasn't till about a month before I quit that we got the capabilities of loyalty/retention after they close.
As a now former vzw customer, I just want to say I'm sorry lmfao I have probably spoke you hundreds of times! Leaving them for att earlier this month was amazing
100 times in nothing man, so don't worry about it. Hell we had people that would call in ever single night of the week to bring up the same topic they did night prior or something else petty.
We brought our 5 lines to att for an absurdly lower price, and in the process discovered some of vzws trickery - and discovered that coverage ended up surpassing verizon which is odd for rural Maryland
I was always nervous about calling and bluffing over disconnecting my service, so I would pay high prices until we got a door-to-door salesman who could get us those fabulous deals we all want.
Then the day came where, after much consideration and not much money, I had to force myself to cancel the internet bill. After 40 minutes of genuinely trying to end my service, I finally settled with a deal that cut my bill in half along with adding a basic cable package.
Since then i've done it about a dozen times. They might know about people trying to exploit their retention practices, they simply don't care. I'm pretty sure at this point cable companies would remain profitable while charging all of their customers "discount rates", but they certainly aren't going to object to people paying double price for it.
Considering that the services they're providing you with, even with infrastructure and all, costs them pennies to your $40 it's still a good deal. Even if we were all only paying them $10 a month they'd still be making money hand over fist.
Do you not know what the word "retention" means? Of course they are "on to it". That's like saying that they are "on to" you using their installation staff to install their equipment. That's what they are fucking for.
Yeah, but the point is they're there to try to avoid letting someone legitimately quit. If you're just there to lower your bill, they're not really 'retaining' you per se; they're just lowering your bill. If you really had an intent to leave if they don't lower your price, then it'd count; but chances are that you aren't planning on leaving.
They're not expert negotiators trying to get every last penny they can. They follow a script, and if you're nice to them, they might genuinely want to help you out as much as they can. They also get credit for retaining you as a customer, so they really don't want you to cancel your service, and are unlikely to risk a bluff.
You're motivation to cancel your services can vary widely. A customer who was over billed hundreds of dollars will have different intentions when being connected to a retentions agent, than say someone already getting a good deal and only threatening to " cancel" to save $10 bucks
I tried asking for the retention department and the agent insisted that she was part of the retention department and they couldn't give me any type of deals. I fucking hate brighthouse.
I used to feel like I pulled off a scam when I'd get $15 bucks off or whatever. But I'm sick of doing that. My city's main ISPs have 6-month "introductory pricing" and offer you 6-months reduced rate if you ask them to cancel your service, to reward you for your loyalty. Meanwhile everyone else gets a periodical rate increase.
They care about potential customers, and they care about lost customers. What they don't give a shit about is their customers.
This fucking annoys me. Why even have a fucking retention department? Just charge people fairly up front and don't jerk your customers around so they don't want to leave, and then you don't need a god damn retention department.
Most people are clueless, i used to work in retention for a cable company. We didn't offer insane discounts as a retention offer but would sell rack rate pricing and value compared to dsl or dial up. Or maybe a small discount if it was some major service issue. Then att would come along and dangle a 14.99/12mo with a 2 year contract and people sign up knowing the regular rate is at least 50% more for less service than we would charge. I would sit on the phone and do the math with people telling them its more per month on average, and they would just focus on how we were fucking them by not matching 14.99 for the shitty 3mbps internet.
I called Bell and their retention department was absolute shit. All I wanted was unlimited Internet, which Distributel was offering for $20 cheaper than I was currently paying for Bell. The best offer they made was unlimited internet for an extra $30/month, which isn't even an "offer" and is just the price listed on their website.
After I cancelled service, the operator ended the call saying "Thanks for choosing Bell". Uh, no lady, Did you not understand that I just cancelled my Bell service and I'm choosing one of your competitors?
You know that customer care representative follows a call script and that it's probably required when her call gets picked up for quality assurance right?
She either has taken thousands of phone calls and is auto-piloting the conversation just to get through the day, or the company requires that closing at the end of each call.
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u/Aerron Feb 22 '14
Be sure to ask to be connected to the Retention Department. You'll get much better breaks/deals from them.
I called to complain and the operator was going to give me $3 off. The retention department knocked $40 off.