I am pretty sure you deal with customer service representatives if you live in the USA. Most of the times it is their fault that you have to call them, for example, you bought something online but they sent a wrong/bad item, they charged something you don’t recognize, etc. Well, most of the cases you will be penalized – you will be wasting many minutes (some cases hours in different days) talking to them. In my cases, about 70% of the time that I spent on phone with customer service I was on hold waiting to speak to someone which was very annoying and agonizing.  In my opinion, is if they waste 30 minutes or more of your time then you should ask for a discount/credit for your time wasted. They will give you something most of the time. I have done it many times with 99% success.

On the other hand, if you want something – let’s say you want to reduce a bill – you have to spend time with customer service. You may not get it with one customer service representative, so call again. If necessary call in a different day. Ask to speak to a supervisor; they are more willing and able to give you what you want or close to it. One person may say it is impossible but you will be surprised that another person will politely give you more than what you asked for. Let me share some of my personal experiences:

Our cell phone company’s service (reception is bad) is not good in our area, so last year I called and told them that if they couldn’t give me a better service they should cancel the contract and let me move to a different provider or they could give me a new phone with a new two year contract. First, she refused because my wife’s phone had another year left of the previous two year contract. I kept pressing that their service was bad and they wouldn’t be losing anything since I would be with them for another two years. After a while she agreed to give me new phones with a new two year contract. In 2013, same company sent me a notification that my contract started from a date when I didn’t even receive the phone (they counted from the day that I ordered the upgrade and accepted the contract). I told them the phone activation date is at least a week later, than the contract date, so they have to change the contract date. In the end, instead of changing the contract date they gave me about $20 credit for those days.

My contract with our dish service provider is such that if they send a technician to our house to fix any problem they will charge me $30. Well, every time they charged me that I called and asked credit for those days that I had bad service which was always more than $30, so they never won.

After contract period was over I was unwilling to pay $50/month for our home security system because I heard people pay less than that. Therefore, I called the customer service and asked to pay half what I was paying. She said, “It is impossible”, so I asked how I could cancel the service. She said that I had to do it in writing using their form. I filled out their cancellation request form and wrote below that I would like to pay $25/month for the alarm system and they have to change the batteries of the panels and sensors. Within a week I got a call from the company management that they are willing to give me the price and would send a technician to change the batteries. I made an appointment for the technician but he didn’t show up that day. I called the management again – he apologized for the technician, made a new appointment and waived the next month’s bill because of wasting my time which I didn’t even ask for.

If you are patient and willing to spend some time with customer service then the end result will make you happy (if saving money makes you happy). Unfortunately though one percent of the time you won’t get what you want and you will know beforehand that it won’t happen, so don’t fight a losing battle. Many times it won’t happen if you are in the beginning of a service contract and there is a steep penalty if you break it. In these cases, you can still get some credit here and there if the service is bad or not what you expected. By the way, be reasonable…