I hope anyone who reads this has had an enjoyable, relaxing Christmas period. We've had a very quiet spell - my mother passed away at the end of November, so things have been a bit distracted, but I'm very pleased that she had such a peaceful end, and I do not have much to discuss about that.
It would be wretched to come up with a miserable, Scrooge-like theme for a Xmas post, but I thought I'd share with you a small, recent personal triumph from among the extended tangle of my coping with the way business works these days.
Here are a couple of parables - the first one is obviously fiction, and silly fiction at that.
Parable A: An elderly man takes a sliced loaf to the checkout at his regular food supermarket. The checkout girl tells him the cost of this loaf is £3; the old chap protests that this is very expensive, and that he can get the same loaf for £1.58 at the local ASDA store. The girl says, "Well, we can't match that, but since you are a regular customer, you can have the loaf for £2".
The customer is not happy, but he can't be bothered going somewhere else for his loaf, so reluctantly pays the £2, and leaves, muttering. He feels that this doesn't seem very fair.
Parable B: The setting for this one is about a year ago. I received a renewal reminder and quotation for my car insurance, from a firm I have dealt with for many years, and was disappointed by how high it was. I contacted them, and pointed out that I could get the same cover for about half the cost from another provider. The customer service rep on the phone never missed a breath, and immediately reduced the quoted premium to a figure which was rather more than half of the original figure. No problem at all - they obviously expected people to phone up and haggle. I was pleased that I had reduced the cost, but the system seemed unfair - especially in a world where the possibility to shop around online has apparently removed any slight concern that not everyone has the opportunity to do such comparison, and may in any case not be inclined to waste so much effort on a routine transaction. This unfairness was emphasised to me last year since the same pantomime had been acted out the year before.
My insurance renews on 16th January, and, sure enough, the quotation for my insurance for 2026 arrived a week ago. The insurer (let us say, for the sake of the story, that they may be called Direct Line) requires me to pay £697 for the year; I realise that this is just them chancing their arm with an opening bid, in case I am daft enough to fail to notice, but I am well tired of this game. I have no wish to waste time and blood pressure phoning to negotiate.
Without contacting them, this year I have arranged identical cover, online, simply and quickly, from the mighty Automobile Association, no less, for the cost of £395. When the documents arrive, next week, I shall ask Direct Line to place their esteemed policy where the sun does not shine. I have, in fact, merely shuffled out into the modern world and shopped around, but it still stinks.
A small matter, but gratifying. The world does not muck around with Scrooge McFoy, I can tell you.
A few years ago my brother-in-law tried the same tactic with SKY but they wouldn’t reduce the cost enough for his liking so he threatened them with leaving. Before he knew it he was through to the ‘leaving’ department and by the end of the day he no longer had any TV to watch! He eventually went back to them and paid the fee…
ReplyDeleteAh yes - SKY. Apart from the fact that we are talking Mafia here, they also have the unfair advantage that as soon as you have the satellite dish and/or the fibre boxes, they become a monopoly supplier. I am (I almost regret to say) free to insure my car with anyone who suits me. Different souq, I guess.
DeleteI am proud to say that I have never knowingly contributed a farthing to the coffers of the Murdoch dynasty - just think what I've missed out on, mind you...
Parable ‘B’ seems fairly common place in the UK and it calls into question company loyalty to their own loyal customers - surely they would give a loyal customer their best offer straight off and not just wait and see if they will ‘haggle’.
ReplyDeleteIt is why I left an insurance company after 32 years of paying into them and never claiming once, but every year I was ‘awarded’ their highest quote before the haggle. The ridiculous thing is, it almost a sort of ritual you have to go through. They have price ‘B’ ready for you without altering any terms of the policy.
It is also why I don’t ‘auto-renew’ on anything.
One day in the future, a smart young thing in a suit will have an idea and think that they have invented the concept of loyalty being a two way thing.
Happy New Year. Norm.
Agree wholeheartedly - this brings to mind the strange behaviour of bank branches (or what I observed of them when there were still some in existence). To qualify for non-zero interest on your savings, you had to pretend that you'd opened a new account each year - it put a tick in the right column for the branch staff bonuses, but the money in the "new" account was the same boring money which you'd had in the old account. I also got increasingly fed up with the fight you had to have, if you wished to make some changes to your bank accounts, to avoid having a Customer Advisor (who was often as much as halfway through the banking exams) attend and try to sell you pet insurance. Also, branch staff who helped you (i.e. did what they were paid for) would often ask if you could kindly give positive feedback on the follow-up phone call which would surely follow. No wonder the bank branches are dying out - it is a shame though. Maybe.
DeleteInsurers - hmmm - I worked for many years for a firm whose main product line was life assurance and pensions. The tradition in that industry in those days was that best advice was what you would expect it might be, and people did what they said they would do. Something slipped.
Very sorry to read of your Mothers Death Tony.
ReplyDeleteBest wishes for 2026.
Cheers,
Lee.
Thanks Lee - I appreciate that. It is very sad, but the preceding 8 or 9 years of extreme dementia were all sad as well, and so her death is in some ways a sort of closure. I no longer have to worry every day about someone I really didn't know any more - a genuine relief, and the poor old lady needed a rest.
DeleteDitto with a National Newspaper all the way through to the final point of not renewing, then I got offered a year subscription for the same price as the original monthly one. I feel a little soiled for accepting…
ReplyDeleteA cousin of mine who is no longer with us once said to me, "we all have our price - we just have to accept the fact; it's depressing when you find out how low it is, though...".
DeleteI paid a subscription to the on-line "Guardian" for some years, until i got sick of them bombarding me with requests for more money. Since you are a friend of mine, Benjamin, I shall confess that I was also astonished to find that their Woke editorial standpoint eventually was getting too irritating for me...
Condolences on your Mum, Tony.
ReplyDeleteThe idea of bartering seems particularly prevalent in mobile phone and internet / TV providers as well. Another symptom of the modern age it seems. Needn't worry though as it will all be done via AI soon as it appears the younger generation have the greatest stress in speaking to other people via telephone or face 2 face....
I wonder will wargames manufacturers cotton on to the idea about negotiating the price of figures?
Neil
Hi Neil - AI may be involved already. One thing that is downright offensive is that these firms somehow think that our relationship with them is so important to us that we should be prepared to not only give them money, but also spend time understanding their company and organisation, and even remember their stupid product names...
Delete"Do you have the Classic Pro Account Plus?"
"I have no idea, and could not give a bugger..."
As a business model the nameless companies have, I believe, tapped into the loathing/frustration/time-wasting futility customers fear by contacting call centres and speaking to "Stephen" or "Sarah" whose English is severely restricted.
ReplyDeleteAs Neil points out AI will soon replace Mumbai* (*if I were to pick a random city for rhyming purposes, obviously) and the new model will be "are you prepared enough to haggle with a soulless robot?"
We need to verify that you are not a robot. Could you please say how many of the picture squares contain motorcycles? If you can't see the picture squares, how many of them do you think might contain motorcycles if you could?
DeleteParanoia strikes deep - into your life it will creep. I was once refused access to an online political newsletter because I would not allow the newsletter to use the location finder on my phone. Think about that for a minute.
My condolences.
DeleteThe new hurdle to phoning up is the automatic voice which asks you to describe the purpose of the call, then fails to understand (and this was a car insurance firm) "to transfer cover from my existing car to a car I will be buying shortly." Perhaps there is an arcane term that specifies this eventuality, but I'm not sure the customer should be expected to know about the jargon any more than about the Classic Pro Ultra account.
Best wishes for the coming year.
The idiot robot phone-answerer is another menace - agreed. I've tried asking it if there are any questions it can understand, but got nowhere.
DeleteIt has a close relative in the on-screen pop-up chat-bot which seems to be there merely to upset the customer.
Happy New Year, my friend - I'm well fed up with 2025, so a change is welcome.
My bank ((coughs…TSB)) called me once to sell me something and demanded that I proved who I was before beginning the conversation. As a paid up member of the awkward squad I naturally refused to do so until they could prove to me who they were. The poor girl at the other end was totally flummoxed. Never did find out what they wanted.
ReplyDeleteMagnificent story JBM - give em hell, I say.
DeleteThis reminds me of a similar tale, from a time when I was managing my mum's bank accounts at Santander. I did this all online, and one morning the Santander website was obviously having problems - wasn't responding to a particular on-screen click, which threatened to defeat my morning's work on her tax return, but the screen showed a useful phone number I could call if I had problems online, so I called it. I asked the young lady who answered if they were having problems with the website, since I was stuck; she couldn't answer any questions about the website until I gave her selected characters from my telephone banking password. I told her that I didn't use telephone banking, only the online service, and therefore didn't have a password, so she was unable to help me. No wonder our Empire went down the toilet.
My condolences on the loss of your Mum.
ReplyDeleteOn the insurance, I think you did the right thing, Tony - plus these firms value 'loyalty' so much that if you ever have the temerity to make a claim, they will find any and all possible reasons to reject it..
I had a similar experience with home insurance, when my provider of 15 years or so (let's call them the Co-Op ) increased the premium from under £300 to £1500 - the difference being that when I queried it by phone, they just bluntly said 'that's our best price, take it or leave it' When I tried to ask why it had increased so much, they refused to explain due to 'commercial confidentiality'. I think they had moved to new (outsourced) brokers, who were clearly placing very little emphasis on customer care - there was not even a pretence of wanting to help. Unsurprisingly, I went elsewhere.
Anyway, a very Merry Xmas and a Happy New Year!
Thanks David - all the best to you. You did well to cry "enough" on the Co-op. In a moment of idleness, it occurred to me that the worst combined outcome for us might be if I were somehow to crash my car into your house. Unlikely.
DeleteOne reason the cost of car insurance is going up is because the cost of claims is greatly inflated by the provision of unnecessarily upmarket courtesy cars as an automatic add-on - and yes, the insurance companies do get paid commission on these rental scams. They all need a jolly good spanking. The posh courtesy car is not so clever if the insurers decide the accident was your fault, or the other side refuse to pay for it...
I discovered this con along time ago, but only after paying needlessly high renewals for both AA membership and car insurance for many years. Like you I now always ask for a cheaper rate and often get it. Back in the day I also used Direct Line for my car insurance, they were expensive, but you used to be able to phone them and speak to someone quickly and they were very helpful. I reckoned the service was worth the cost. But, now it's all online and the service is rubbish I have consigned them to the heap of firms I prefer to not do business with.
ReplyDeleteHi Rob - good man - well played. During my research this year, I read some stuff on Martin Lewis' "Money Saving Expert" site, which included a report from a man who got quotes for insurance from the Comparethemarket site which included one from his own current insurer for considerably less than he was then paying. Armed with screenshots and detailed evidence, he rang this insurer and told them about it, and they put the phone down on him. Maybe he was insufficiently grovelling?
Delete