Customer Chat Transcript

One of the things on our list while visiting mom was to have a look at her phone/internet/cable pricing.  She lives in a pretty rural area, so has has to have two different companies.  While surfing the companies website we found that they had an online chat feature with customer service.  I hopped on, and pretended to be my mom.

Within about 10 minutes I got my mom a pretty decent discount on her cable and internet services.  Next up...the phone company.

Here is the conversation, feel free to try it out with your company and let me know if this transcript helped you negotiate a successful discount:

Customer Chat Transcript

Please wait while we find an agent to assist you...

You have been connected to Ryan.

Ryan:  Thank you for contacting Phone Company Name, my name is Ryan, and I will be assisting you today, how may I help you?

Jessie’s Mom:  I currently pay just under $100 for tv and internet, however; A Different Phone Company Name offers both of theses, as well as phone for about the same price

Jessie’s Mom:  is there anything you can do to be competitive with them?

Ryan:  I am just checking into the promotions available

Jessie’s Mom:  perfect, thank you

Ryan:  I am sorry, however we do not currently have any promotions that I can update to your account for you.

Jessie’s Mom:  So, you would rather I cancel and move all services to A Different Phone Company Name?

Jessie’s Mom:  I am surprised that you have no other options

Ryan:  If you would like I can get you in contact with our Resolve department to speak about the possibility of cancelling and look into further options for you.

Jessie’s Mom:  thank you

Ryan has left the session.

Please wait while we find an agent from the Resolve department to assist you.

You have been connected to Andrew.

Jessie’s Mom:  Hi Andrew

Jessie’s Mom:  Ryan passed me on to you

Jessie’s Mom:  I am looking for some help on my pricing

Andrew:  hello, I will do my best to help you out.

Jessie’s Mom:  Thank you

Andrew:  no problem. please give me a few seconds, and I will access your acct so to see what i can do.

Jessie’s Mom:  thank you

Andrew:  you currently have a watch and surf bundle with us, and you pay $90.10/mth ... is this correct?

Jessie’s Mom:  It's currently $97.01 plus tax

Jessie’s Mom:  i think

Andrew:  i see. i checked your bill, and the services are $90.10 (plus tax), but what i can do is add a loyalty discount (of 20%) lowering your bill, before taxes, to $72.08/mth (plus tax), if you're interested.

Jessie’s Mom:  that seems very reasonable to me - I appreciate your efforts

Andrew:  that's a monthly savings of $18.02, and i can do this for the next 12 months - an overall savings of $216.24.

Jessie’s Mom:  excellent

Andrew:  would you like me to add this to your account?

Jessie’s Mom:  yes please

Andrew:  just give me one minute, and i'll make sure it gets done for you.

Jessie’s Mom:  thank you

Andrew:  it's complete. you're future bills will be $72.08 ($80.73 - taxes in).

Jessie’s Mom:  thank you very much

Jessie’s Mom:  i appreciate your time

Andrew:  is there anything further i can help you with?

Jessie’s Mom:  No, thank you

Andrew:  it was my pleasure, thank you for contacting Phone Company Name.

Time Away

I've spent the last week and a bit at my mom's with my brother, his significant other, and my husband. They are heading back to the big city in the next day and I will be staying here for another week.  I find myself at a loss with what to write. 

I've started and stopped quite a few times.  I'll write a few sentences and then delete them.  There is a lot of personal stuff going on and everything seems so trivial...so unimportant.

We've been distracting ourselves quite a bit.  We helped mom take a load of stuff to the dump, and have been re-organizing her office a bit.  We did notice that mom pays a heck of a lot more for her internet/tv/phone services then we do - so might try to take on her small town service provider to see if we get get a bit of a better deal.  She pays about $150/month for fairly basic services.  When I asked her for an idea on something to write about - she suggested that.

On a positive note, I had applied through my companies community support program for funding for a family-initiated granting program and was award a significant lump sum.  It's very personal, so I don't write much about it here - but we're a bit better than 80% of goal #1 now.

On another positive note - it's performance review time for both Jordan and I over the next couple of months.  We should both see increases in pay when looking to the market and our performance as well as some educational pieces that add to our profiles.

Also - my photographer sent me higher resolution wedding photo images...super happy about that. 

~Jessie

Our Dogs

I'm spending a lot of time with my family for the next little while and might not be writing as much about $$.

Here are our dogs:

You might recognize Aries and Baxter - the smallest one is Conan. They don't always get along, but a you can see, it's getting better.

February ReCap

My brother was watching me go through February's spending, and said, make a pie chart - i like pie.

Here it is:

Bar Stool Bench

I'm pretty excited to share this with you, Jordan and I finally found the perfect bar stools - a two person bench!!

It took us a solid six weeks before we came across this gem.  The colours are right and it fits perfectly at our island.


I'm looking forward to enjoying a glass of wine and watching my husband cook!

This was a steal at about $250 on a boxing day special.  I'm hoping to find/make a couple of red throw pillows for it and then it will be complete.

DIY - Stairs

One of the options that Jordan and I didn't want to pay our home builder for was stairs in the back.  We're intending on building a deck in the spring, so really didn't see the value in paying to install stairs that we would just tear out.

It's been about six weeks in the new house now and we were both finding that we would really like to use the back entrance to the house.  The front entrance has been getting sooo messy with muddy dog paws!

Today, while I'm in BC visiting my family, Jordan built us some stairs - for a pretty decent price!

It cost $74.48 to build these stairs and took an hour and a  half!  It's such a good 'temporary set' that Jordan things we may be able to incorporate them into the deck too! I'm so excited and he did such a good job, I can't wait to test them out.

Income Tax

Who's excited to file their income taxes this year?

I am!

In fact, I've already done a 'dry run' and come up with a net return of about $1,000 (just for me, not including J).  Now I just have to wait for my T4 to get it done properly.

Question for you all - do you use online tax return software or do you do your taxes by hand and mail it in?