critical perception

One simple phone call is all it took.... just got my telephone bill from Telus... credit of $25.90... wow how about that?

Back in February, I was taken aback seeing how much our household monthly bills were... I looked into it further and had to make a few cutbacks on a few certain items we weren't using but was paying for anyways...

I remembered a tip I got from a dude at Memory Express: he told me I should check my home internet speed; Telus and Shaw may throttle your speed down and won't tell you about it... in fact, most ISPs will continue to charge you certain older rates for your internet service but will also offer cheaper rates for higher speeds; and/or have your service run at slower speeds and though they are paying for the higher speed and bandwidth as most clients are oblivious to it. Most will just pay their bill every month... So I checked it out .

I went to Speedtest.net and found I was paying for 6Mbps download speed (Telus highest speed back circa 2001) but getting only 3Mbps download speed; AND, the price I was paying to Telus was $5.00 more per month than the 15Mbps service they were offering without a contract.

So, with no questions asked the customer service rep at Telus upped me to the 15Mbps service for $10.00 LESS than what I paying per month before. I could've went for the usual 6Mbps for less money but internet usage is huge in my household.

This time, I needed to fix my phone bill... we had an old phone bundle that wasn't offered anymore: included call display, call waiting, voice mail, and 200 minutes of long distance free per month... with high speed internet (15Mbps), the bill per month was $86.87!

We decided call waiting was annoying; it always beeped on a call and when you answered it usually was a phone solicitor anyways. The voice mail was always full of bankers wanting to sell you insurance. We rarely used long distance. But, call display was a necessity.., the only feature we really used anyways.

One call to Telus to cut off some features and they automatically offered me to keep my existing package and they would give me 15% off per month! Nope... cut it down to basic phone and one feature I told the rep... wow..call display is free now!! Long distance is only 4cents per minute! Phone package is only $26.00 minus $5 bundle savings; total monthly bill with high speed internet would come to I expect $64.63!

A monthly savings of $22.24! Annual savings of $266.88!! With just one phone call.....