How to make $600/hr
Renegotiate.
In this case, I just got off the phone with Pitney Blowes, whose monthly fee to me for my postal meter had crept upward from someplace in the twenties to $32.46, and who now sent me a polite letter informing me that they were automatically signing me up for a $15.99 annual fee for the Postal Education Program.
The latter was the final straw. Automatically enrolling customers in programs they don’t ask for (let alone don’t need) is insulting. So, filled with brio and outrage, I called to cancel the entire program, knowing full well what they would do: seek to keep me by renegotiating.
So here was their offer:
1. They would cancel the offending program and remove the charge.
2. They would lower my monthly bill to $19.99.
3. They would waive the last month’s bill.
Tally the results for one year and you’ve got $198 plus change. For a 19 minute call.
Lessons in this:
1. Seemingly little charges and incremental increases add up.
2. Yes, it’s worth the phone call to protest.
August 2nd, 2007 at 9:29 pm
My wife Ruth makes those calls regularly to charge card companies. They increase our spending limit and she has them reduce it. They increase our interest rate and she gets them to decrease it. We’re paying them to use the card and we still have to call to keep them from playing games.
August 4th, 2007 at 4:39 pm
I do it with credit-card companies, too. In 20+ years of renegotiating fees, only once has a credit-card company turned me down — and I promptly closed the account.
What seemed especially egregious with Pitney Blowes was the blase way they added a surcharge of an annual service I never authorized and didn’t want. This sort of surcharge is rampant; that’s why it’s important (however time-consuming) to check and balance your statements.
Another reason is that restaurants frequently add hidden tip overages. King’s Fish House in particular. (I’m naming them because they’ve added $10 to my bill TWICE, in two separate locations.)