Technology

Negotiate a Lower Cable/Internet Bill

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Ahh the cable bill.  If ever there was a archetypical love/hate relationship between the American household and a service provider then this has to be it.  On the one hand, people love tv, and internet connectivity has become almost an essential utility (especially for the younger generations).  However, people hate the prices that they pay for these services.  If you want to see what I’m talking about, check out the Consumerists annual “Worst Company in America“.  Comcast, Time Warner, Direct TV, Dish, Cablevision, AT&T, and Verizon make regular appearances and often fare quite well (err, bad) in the bracketed tournament of hated companies.

I would consider us lucky because where we live we actually have a choice between two internet providers, Comcast and Frontier.  Back when we rented an apartment, we used Frontier and paid about $42/mo (after all the taxes and fees) for a 7 Mbps internet connection.  Mbps stands for mega bits per second and shouldn’t be confused with MBps (mega Bytes per second).  Generally, whenever you see internet speeds folks are talking about bits.  There are 8 bits in a byte so a 8 Mbps is the same as 1 MBps.  Confused?  Good, let’s move on.

When we moved into our house 6 months ago we decided to try out Comcast’s internet only service.  Comcast frequently runs promotions for new customers where you pay a set rate for the first 6 months of service and then they jack up that rate for the next 6 months and then you end up paying the ‘retail’ rate from then on. You are free to cancel at any time so I figured I’d give it a go.  Our promo deal was for a 25 Mbps connection for $30, then it would bump up to $50, and finally to $65.

November was our first month at the $50 level and I already knew what I was going to do back when I signed up.  I called Comcast to negotiate a lower rate.  20SomethingFinance.com has a nice how to that I roughly followed.  There were a few differences and some omissions that I think merit some discussion.

  1. Before calling, do your homework and see what other companies are offering, this is extremely important!
  2. After dialing the number, the menu options are a bit different than what he has listed so don’t blindly hit #4 followed by #2 or you may end up ordering “Chairs, Rails, & Extreme Wrestling Pay per View”.
  3. After getting a retention/cancellation rep they will ask for your account details, address etc.  It will seem like they are going to happily cancel your services without even giving you a chance to negotiate.  Don’t worry, we’ll get to that in a second, just stay calm and confident.
  4. Finally, after verifying your account the rep will drop a short little line like “why are you leaving?”  That’s your cue!
  5. Explain the fantastic deal the competition is offering and make sure to stress that your current bill is too high.  If there is no competition in your area, they probably know and you’ll need to get creative.
  6. Be patient and friendly, especially if they put you on hold.
  7. If you get a counter offer, make sure you understand it.  If you don’t like it, either try calling again or cancel your service.  This is where doing your homework before hand pays off.

I looked up Frontier’s rates and they had indeed changed from our renter days.

$30 – 6 Mbps

$40 – 12 Mbps

$50 – 24 Mbps

The Comcast rep offered me a 50 Mbps connection good for the next 6 months for $35/mo, a credit for this month, and access to streampix, Comcast’s (weak) version of Netflix.  Yes sirree.  Sign me up.  Amount saved over the next 6 months by making one simple phone call, $90.  Time spent on phone, 9 minutes.  Internet speed twice as fast, cherry on top.

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Freebie Website #2 – MyEnergy.com

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I first heard about www.myenergy.com  from my gas company.  They wrote a short blurb about them on either their website or newsletter (I don’t remember which).  Anyway, I decided to check the website out.

The gist of the website is that you sign up for a free account, link your online utility accounts (electric, gas, & water), and they keep a running tally on how your doing in regards to conservation.  I hear you proclaim, “wait a second, I already know how much I’m spending on utilities!”  Good point, but do you know how much your friends are spending or how much other citizens of your city or town are consuming?

myenergy dashboardThe second reason to consider using the website are rewards.  Taken verbatim from the website:

How it works
MyEnergy analyzes your past patterns of energy use and makes a prediction of how much energy you’re likely to use in each subsequent month, accounting for variations in weather from the past to the present. When you use less than the prediction, you’ve saved! Here’s how many points you get for your savings:

  • Gas 10 points per therm
  • Electric 1 point per kWh

  • Water 1 point per hundred gallons (or 10 points per 1,000 gallons)

So far we’ve earned 106 points for doing nothing except the initial sign up and living our daily lives.  What can you exchange your points for?  That’s hard to say, I think it depends on what state you are in as it seems to be a mix of local and national products & services.  For example, one of the rewards is a free one month supply of Popchips for 100 points.  I googled around to try and find some details about how much you get and the best I could find in about 30 seconds of searching was that it was a $30 value.  That doesn’t sound half bad.

“It all sounds too good to be true, what’s the catch?”

The catch so far as I can tell is that MyEnergy is owned by Nest.  Nest is probably best known for its iOS-esque thermostat.

Naturally, there are ads on the website encouraging you to buy Nest products.  Also, I would be shocked if Nest isn’t collecting all of this utility data (anonymized hopefully)  for their own commercial benefit.  If you’re a company specializing in home automation devices that save consumers money then what better way than to offer a website that aims to do just that.  “Hey, you spent a lot on your electric bill last month, try getting a new thermostat to help out with that.”

The social nature of the website just ties into the marketing.    Does Big Brother knowing how much energy I use every month bother me?  Mmmm, let me think that over with a chip…  nope.  It does not.  The only problem that I’ve had with the website so far is that I cannot link my water bill to it.  While that is likely the fault of the municipality that I live in, it still bugs me that I cannot link all of my utility accounts (and thus lose out on rewards and being able to peep at others usage).

If you’d like to join the website and friend me click on the button below.

[button link=”http://email.myenergy.com/wf/click?upn=rFj-2Fn6VLqMWXmfDU5VKABT2DuhRcEWX6AkyUnvA2UOP2C-2BCUc7GmPALEjMRt3M-2BJp0mFZLbZkJ5KkaDoaZJthu8NWCzujznpsQrKdMeFWIMEv-2Fo26QNXztoDOt-2FHzGWWpEi-2Bofi1nBayFq7Re6A3kTDsEel6VYqbBwXoOKO7QMdrFXSXXIT604dMVai912jS9QqitoVdsCjvHuLFxjzzkw-3D-3D_O7ROD4svS-2BWtZVG4Rcp0QhBUjocZnvHx8LpqrpdCOiVd0SUvfaSL5I6MsytMUEKb-2BTN45VWg1UglzAArp-2Bg76oaWHUywv18YqBzzmuEHgFTmW36SyXR1UfSFPcZQtMhrwEf1-2F8QUPCrTYcn1-2BOLxNJxm0J9A-2Fl68SXgTOV6nQMLDO3i3BanpU8Jwqyp64TmFUhGxLU-2FbESZfbrNsZmcjQ3RoKYEnXz-2B6JqzFli5VMxFHchtJxT2NSStDQJzNnTnUEDgb9L8TRr19w7UrfsIjNfZsfHA9wOIVXsVNEFVhEbtlUTG12JHaq4SubwI-2BCBcQ ” target=””]Join MyEnergy[/button]

Freebie Website #1

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What is more frugal than free?  I use a lot of free websites everyday.  Some are incredibly useful and others are diversions that help me procrastinate/unwind after a long day.  Reddit (pronounced “Read It”) definitely falls into the latter category.

If you are unfamiliar with Reddit, suffice it to say that it is a huge online forum that has communities organized around topics.  One of those topics is personal finance and even though I am a lurker (someone who never posts comments or questions) I still enjoy browsing the topics.

The anonymous nature of the website is likely a key reason why individuals are willing to share details about their financial lives.  Since personal finances are often regarded as a taboo subject (when was the last time you told someone how much you make at your job?), it is refreshing to visit a place where money is treated more objectively.

Check out the subreddit personal finance over here: http://www.reddit.com/r/personalfinance Please note, I’m not responsible for how many wasted hours might occur from clicking on that link.

Reassess Who Hosts Your Website

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About two weeks ago I received an automated email from macminicolo.net to let me know that my hosting contract was coming up for renewal.  For those of you who are unfamiliar with MacMiniColo, it is a business that places either a leased or owned Mac Mini into a secure datacenter.  While customers don’t have physical access to their minis, they can do almost anything with them remotely.  In 2009 I sent a mini to the datacenter so I could host several business websites and run my own email server.

Mac Mini (2009)

Macminicolo

The reason why I opted to use MacMiniColo in the first place versus using a more well known web host such as GoDaddy was because in 2009 there weren’t many web hosts that accommodated Ruby on Rails.  My options at the time were limited to paying an exorbitant monthly fee for a dedicated server, or to buy my own server hardware (a mac mini) and setup the machine someplace where it would have an always on, super fast internet connection.  I chose the latter.

Life hummed along just dandy until two weeks ago when I got that renewal notice and it made me think.  I haven’t used Ruby on Rails for years.  In fact, I probably didn’t need a dedicated server what-so-ever!  It was time to reassess what I needed to run my business and personal web presence.

The first thing that I needed to do was to get in touch with the owner, Brian, of MacMiniColo and see if there was any room to negotiate the base price.  Brian is a nice guy and if I could strike up a deal it would also save me the tedious task of moving 3 websites and a dozen email accounts to somewhere else.  His response was pretty much what I expected, $31.50/mo was the lowest he could offer.  I was confident that I could find someone out there that would meet my needs for less than $378/year.

Host Gator

I did *some* research and decided to migrate over to HostGator.  They are like pretty much every other hosting company out there in that they offer shared, semi-dedicated, and dedicated servers.  With the Mac Mini, I had a dedicated server and all of that machines resources were devoted solely to me.  Generally speaking, a website doesn’t take many resources to run, so many small businesses and individuals (myself included) opt to save money by going with a shared server.  It is exactly what it sounds like.  Many different websites are hosted from the same machine.  By switching from a dedicated server to a shared server and using a promotion that HostGator was running I was able to cut my yearly web presence cost down to $71.78, or $5.98/mo.

Host Gator

 

Unfortunately, the honeymoon didn’t last long.  Within a week, both my brother, who piggybacks a website on my hosting, and myself noticed that our respective websites were loading far slower than when they were being served by the Mac Mini.  I did some more research and discovered that Host Gator had recently been bought out my mega conglomerate EIG, Endurance International Group.  EIG owns a whole bunch of web hosts, see a list here, and had recently been moving Host Gator customers from a datacenter in Houston to one that they owned in Provo.  Their Provo datacenter had a major malfunction in early August, that took out HostGator, BlueHost, and HostMonster customers for the better part of a day.

Overcrowding of shared servers plus a spotty track record made me rethink the three year contract that I had just inked.  Did I really want to risk spending the next three years with them?

MDDHosting

MDDHosting

Nope! There is a reason why money back guarantees exist.  HostGator offered a 45 day return policy so after doing some better research and migrating to MDDHosting I took full advantage of it.  MDDHosting is a smaller hosting provider and more importantly, the owner claims that he won’t accept a buyout from EIG.  Switching from HostGator to MDDHosting was a breeze because they both use similar backends (CPanel).  All I had to do was submit a transfer request to them, the tech that I talked to said they get tons everyday.

My websites, this one included, load much faster and more reliably now that I am with MDDHosting.  The best part is that I saved even more money by switching to MDDHosting.  I locked in a three year contract for only $37.38/year or just $3.12/mo.

If I had accepted the status quo, I would have lost out on $1,021.87 over the next three years.

Oh, and one last thing.  Since I purchased the original mini, it is still mine.  I should be receiving it in the mail/UPS/Fedex within the next week or two.  At that point I can either sell it on eBay or use it to replace one of our home computers.

Are you hosting a website?  With whom are you hosting it with?  Have you ever considered getting your own personal domain name (e.g. andrewschenk.com)?

Trimming the Phone Bill, Part 2

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If you haven’t read part 1 yet, then you can see it here.

…Continuing on…

GoPhone prepaid wireless service was saving us a lot of money and we were happy with that for several months.  However, nothing is sacred on our budget, and when I was looking over numbers a month ago I was convinced that we could save even more money without sacrificing any change in lifestyle.

I began looking for alternatives and was intrigued when I read a blog post on mrmoneymustache.com.  Mr. MM goes into considerable detail so I will provide a synopsis of sorts.  By switching from AT&T’s prepaid GoPhone service to Airvoice Wireless we could get a comparable level of service for only $10/mo per phone.

Airvoice Wireless

Airvoice is one of dozens of MVNOs, Mobile Virtual Network Operator.  You can think of an MVNO as a reseller who buys network coverage and airtime from AT&T and then sells it in different packages to customers.  Of course there are MVNOs that do the same thing for the Verizon network.  In order to switch from GoPhone to Airvoice we had to do a few things.

1.) Purchase new SIM cards

While it may be possible to switch over to the AirVoice network and retain your original AT&T sim card, Airvoice cards can be found pretty cheaply ($5) online.  There are several different sizes available nowadays thanks to the smartphone race for thinner devices.  Our

iPhone 4S phones required micro sim cards.

micro sim

2.) (Optionally) Port Your Phone Number

Airvoice Wireless makes it easy to keep your phone number.  Just fill out the form on their website and within a day or two your new SIM card will have your old phone number attached to it.  When GoPhone got our port request they terminated our account.  We knew this was coming, but it’s worth saying that any credit or account balance that you had with them gets wiped out (i.e. if you had $5 in your account it is theirs now).

3.) (Optionally) Enable Data & Texting

By default Airvoice has texting and data disabled on new accounts.  You simply have to give them a call and ask for them to enable it for your account.

Here is what $10 gets us each month with Airvoice:

250 minutes or 500 text messages or 30mb of data or some combination of all three.

We’ve only been with Airvoice for a week or so and I still need to switch over Shae’s phone.  There are a few key differences between the two prepaid services.  I like some of them and others I’m not terribly fond of.

Pro’s of Airvoice:

  • Cheaper than GoPhone with similar features
  • Don’t have to explicitly add a data package (saves us $5 when we travel and want maps/email on the road)
  • Same network coverage
  • Unused dollars rollover to the next month

Con’s of Airvoice:

  • A message pops up on the phone after each action that costs money.  For example if I send a text a popup appears on the screen telling me how much it cost, $0.02, and my remaining account balance.  Some people might find this helpful, but I wish I could limit it to once a day or once a week.
  • Their website is very lacking.  While auto refills can be set up.  It takes some digging to find where and how to do it.
  • Visual voicemail does not work.  With GoPhone it would work so long as you had a data package.
  • Account balance will expire unless you add to it every month.  For example if you skip a month you lose service.

So there you have it.  We started off a couple of years ago spending $113/month for phone service and once we finish switching over to Airvoice we’ll be spending just $21/month.

We will save over $1100 a year in our phone bill by paying only what we need and not a penny more.  What could you do with an extra $1100?

Pssst, the correct answer is to invest it, earn 5% return for 20 years, and have an extra $16k in interest for a grand total of $38k.  Is your phone really that important to you?!