Haggling a new contract

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Yippee38

2[H]4U
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Apr 21, 2000
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My wife and I are getting ready to get new phones and a new contract. We've been using AT&T forever and haven't had any problems until about the last year. Now we get dropped calls all the damn time. So we have been thinking about switching to Sprint (as I want the Galaxy S II).

So my question is, has anybody haggled a better rate or equipment prices from any of the providers when getting a new/renewing an old contract? If so, what strategy did you use?

I know I can get a discount through my employer, but I'm wondering if I can haggle a better price out of them, then apply the discount. Or possibly get a better discount through haggling than I can get from my employer.-
 
If you call up AT&T then maybe. The stores won't do jack, I tried. But I found better deals at best buy and amazon wireless.

Maybe all your dropped calls you just started getting are the phones themselves and not the carrier? Seeing as it's a recent development....
 
See if you get a discount because of where you work. I get 18% off on my bill from Sprint. My company has a large account with them. And maybe you can get them to waive the activation fee for defecting over to them.
 
Yep, check all your company discounts on plan pricing, equipment and options, etc. My wife and I get 25% off with Sprint, accessory discounts, no activation fees, etc.
 
I also have a company discount. The actually physical store wouldn't do jack. My best pricing on equipment was still right around the corner at best buy.
 
While you won't get a price discount, you can possibly successfully obtain free minutes. Usually they'll give you rollover minutes, which I think are crap because they expire after a year and are only 1time benefits, but I have been able to obtain concessions like 100 free minutes per line per month extra for the lifetime of my being a customer regardless of the plan I switched to.

I'm with Tmobile now, but I had those 500 free minutes (on our family plan) for about 8 years before leaving AT&T. If you can swing something like that you might be able to obtain savings by moving to a less expensive plan. Although I got that by taking my issue to a manager in a business care store. My issue was a few months of billings mistakes along the lines of being charged for calls to my phone from 1234567 and double billed for call waiting times in excess of 2 hours at a time, and various other "oddities" that no sane mobile user would or could do.

The strategy I used was pointing out that there are no such numbers as 1234567 or 1111111 so the error had to be within their database. Mobile users know better than to place one another on hold and burn hundreds of minutes, and they clearly would never put each other on hold and simultaneously call the same person and continue to talk, so apparently there was an error in their system or a malfunction at the handset. Whatever I did, though, I always assured whoever I was dealing with that this was a system error, one that I was certain AT&T would be able to address to my satisfaction, that me and the representative were operating within certain constraints that did not reflect upon our personal desires to work with one another, and that I wanted to remain a loyal AT&T customer.

For dropped calls, though, you'll probably get rollover minutes.
 
Just a thought here, I had a slow steady decline of service quality with AT&T over the past 6 months and I was about to switch over to Verizon, when I stumbled across a forum post somewhere that suggested turning 3g service off in the house. It made a 100% difference. I can make calls from the basement and have had 0 dropped calls or failed texts since. I use wifi at home anyway so its not a hassle. I just might have something to do with the upgrading they are doing to the network in my area- it fits the time frame of my trouble.
 
banned_user said:
Just a thought here, I had a slow steady decline of service quality with AT&T over the past 6 months and I was about to switch over to Verizon, when I stumbled across a forum post somewhere that suggested turning 3g service off in the house. It made a 100% difference. I can make calls from the basement and have had 0 dropped calls or failed texts since. I use wifi at home anyway so its not a hassle. I just might have something to do with the upgrading they are doing to the network in my area- it fits the time frame of my trouble.
Click to expand...

I thought about that, but my wife's phone is pre-3G and she's having the same problems. I generally only have the problems in the Chicago area. They don't really occur elsewhere (I'm a pilot, so I'm all over the place constantly.).
 
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