this post was submitted on 28 Nov 2024
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Aboit ten years ago I had XM Radio in my car. Came for free for the first year, then renewed me for $30 for the following year as part of the promo of getting the car. I occasionally used the service for Comedy Central radio and a couple other things, but was largely playing audio off my phone from Spotify/MP3s.
After those two years an XM rep called me since my subscription was about to expire. They wanted $15/mo or $150 for the year. I laughed and said the most I'd pay would be $50 for a year. They tried to argue with me before I cut them off and told them "Look, here's the deal. Either you find me some special that brings the price down to that rate and get some money from me or you get no money from me since I'll be canceling my service. You're selling a service that I don't need and has limited benefit to me that my phone hooked up to my car can't do.". After a few minutes they found me a special and got approval from their manager. That wound up being my last year of using the service.
It's dumb how much publically traded companies try to squeeze their" customers" and staff to drive up value for their true customers, the share holders. It's such a short term view on life and value.
Cox did this with my dad, fucked around and found out. To this day, if you bring up Cox Cable, my dad goes, "OH, you mean the company I was a loyal customer to for 32 years, 10 months, and 17 days?!"
He had one of those cable-internet-landline bundles and was paying something like $150/month for it, something about he just had to call every renewal or something like that. Well, him and my mom fell on some hard times and forgot/missed a payment/something happened with Cox.
My dad gets the bill the next month, and it says his package is now $300/month (or something ridiculous like that). He calls Cox and wants to know what's up, why his bill doubled in a month, etc They told him he missed his renewal and thus his promotional price was lost, and now he's got to do the regular price. He explains what's been going on and how they're doing their best, they want to remain a customer, but they're not paying $300/month for something they were paying $150/month for.
Cox refused to budge, offering a like $25/month discount at best. So my dad goes, "So, I just want to understand... If I was a new customer creating a new account, you'd give me my old rate? And if I hadn't missed the thing last month, you'd give me my old rate?" Correct. "So my being a customer of yours for over 32 years... That gets me nothing?!" That's correct, Sir, so would you like to renew, make any changes, or make a payment?
"Oh, you can close the account, I'll be dropping off your equipment in about 3 hours, thank you." And they still argued with my dad, I think they moved up to $50/month discount, and he just told them to kick rocks, he would rather have no internet, cable, or telephone, than give Cox his money ever again. And to this day, he refuses to recommend Cox to anyone, and tells them to check his file whenever they call or come to the door trying to get him to come back.
It's because the people who will actually cancel are the minority. The companies wouldn't do this if it resulted in a net loss for them. They make more money being assholes, so they'll always be assholes.
Corporations are creating multitudes of Arya Starks, all stropping their knives and waiting for a chance to wet the blade.
Refusing to reward a corporation for their bad behavior is incredibly cathartic.
The value proposition of satellite radio is so incredibly bad for the overwhelming majority of people I don't understand how they're still in business.
Also the quality is awful. If I wanted audible compression artifacts I could dust off my late 90s mp3 collection.
What's dumb is that Sirius will continue doing that indefinitely, but you have to play the game and call to cancel, then go do the whole song and dance. So I didn't even activate the free shit that came with the car. I don't want to play that game. I would pay the lower rate indefinitely if they just charged that, but I'm not going to play games.
Yeah. A/B tests have no way to prove the value of customer loyalty to a fair deal, so nobody knows how to implement it anymore.
There's historic evidence - Coca Cola was infamously still 5¢ long after everything else went up in price, and it worked out.
But everyone is obsessed with "engagement" right now.
They've got a deal that's three years for $99 but you have to really push them to offer it to you. They say it's for new customers only but it really isn't.
This reminds me of the people you see in stores who are trying to sell you on a phone plan. I have mint mobile and pay like $15 a month for my plan which has more than enough data. They asked how much I currently pay and I told them it and they just immediately gave up and were like yeah we can't match that.