Just Ask

If you’ll recall, we had renewed our Sprint contract and got a 23% employee discount, which replaced the 10% discount we’d negotiated just by asking.

I always make DH open up the Sprint bill because whenever I open it they’ve always made some mistake that costs us time or money.  This time DH opening it didn’t help.  They’d charged us for the new phones (which suck, btw) that are supposed to be rebated (still waiting on that rebate…).  They charged the regular cost with the 23% discount applied (yay).  And they charged a $40 activation fee.

Of course, that had me livid as when I approved the whole getting new phones we didn’t need (that, as I mentioned, turned out to suck), I hadn’t approved any $40 one time charge.  DH, who is a sweetheart, was sure he’d made some kind of mistake and tried to figure out what he’d done wrong by looking through all the forms we’d filled out and stuff.

Because we’d renewed online, we weren’t supposed to get any kind of activation fee.  It said so.  Somewhere in the fine print on one of the free phone with renewal and rebate things we’d  signed, it did mention activation fees might apply, contradicting the much larger print that said no fee if you renewed on the internets.

Oh, I said, it’s one of those things where they messed up and they’ll get rid of it if you complain.  DH said he doubted that, but since the new phones suck he would see about sending them back and getting the $40 charge waived.  I said just ask for them to take off that $40 charge.

He called.  They took off the $40 charge.  It took about a minute on hold and a minute talking to the customer service representative and a minute saying no thank you we didn’t want them to sell us anything else.

The moral:  Just ask.

I’ve just asked for credit card mistakes, even when the fault is with the USPS (a problem in one apartment in one neighborhood in one part of the country we lived where mail service was spotty at best).  I’ve just asked for medical billing mistakes (BC/BS in that same part of the country… come to think of it most of our customer service problems were a that part of the country thing).  I’ve just asked with internet providers and cable companies and so on.  Generally just asking just fixes things.  Sometimes it takes multiple askings and a firm sense of being in the right, but often things just get fixed with one quick phone call or email.

We get a lot of slack from companies.  Of course, we also pay our bills on time and have great credit scores.  But what better reason to keep on the straight and narrow than it making your life easier?

What have you just asked for?