Conversation with Comcast

At church on Easter Sunday, we were challenged to simply our lives and figure out ways to save $1 a day for 50 days and then donate the $$ saved to fund digging wells in Uganda. Well, Graham and I have been trying to find ways to cut back on luxuries to meet this challenge--we haven't been to Starbucks in a whole week, I opted not to buy the strawberry plants that drew my attention at Home Depot, and with next week's menu, I'm going to try to tone down the gourmet meals and keep our food budget to a minimum. We also made the decision to cancel cable for the next 2 months to save ~$13/mo.

I got on the phone w/ a very nice lady from Comcast yesterday. First off, she couldn't get over how cool it was that our names were "Kelsie" and "Graham" (I think she must have been referring to Kelsey Grammer). Anyway, when she was done raving about our names and we finally got on to business, I totally failed in accessing our account. Apparently my name is not on our account and I couldn't recall the last 4 of Graham's soc sec # (we're still newlywed--how am I supposed to have it memorized already!!?), I couldn't give the exact $$ amount of our monthly payment, I was driving and so couldn't give her the checking account number where we make our payments from and I guess I even screwed up our address (she misheard me though---I really do at least know that by heart!!!)

Anyway, finally she decided she'd tortured me enough and asked what she could do for me. I told her I was wanting to cancel cable to save money. She informed we that because we get both our internet and tv through comcast that we're getting a discounted rate on the internet portion. If I were to cancel cable, the price of our internet would jump up to $57/mo (we currently pay $60/mo for internet AND cable). It didn't seem worth it to save only $3/mo so I was pretty much telling her nevermind when she told me that she could make a couple other changes for me. Would it be okay if she dropped our monthly cable fee to $10/mo and decreased our internet fee to $39/mo for a total of $49/mo??? Hmmm, let me think about it for a minute.....YES! I think that would be quite nice. So I guess I'm saving us $11/mo by doing really nothing other than call and threaten to cancel--wow! The only problem is that it kind of defeats the whole purpose of saving money by cutting back. We're definitely saving money but at no sacrificial cost to us! I guess we still need to find other places to simplify....

I guess the moral of the story is that it never hurts to call and see if you can't get a better rate for your current services....that is, if your name mirrors a movie star's. I think that definitely worked to our advantage!