What price customer loyalty?

Thank you nelliemoser for that suggestion. I have done so and got a very sympathetic response including a promise to pass this up the lne to the decision makers. I was also offered the discount if I chose to place an order so I am much happier and they keep a customer thanks to an enlightened call centre operative. You get nothing if you don't ask!!

Give the company a ring and say you are not happy with them just offering deals to potential new customers. Ask for the new business prices.

I did it with Car Breakdown and house insurance this year. Both with one of the big companies.

I said that I have been with you for years, I don't want to move but look what xyz company are offering for this service.

The person on the phone had to confirm he could do that but to be honest I don't think they would have refused at all.

I have emailed the company attaching my post on here and thought it might give them an opportunity to respond- either favourably or to "put me in my place". So far - zilch from Customer Services so I can only assume that HOTTER SHOES don't care about keeping their customers but are only interested in attracting new ones. Win some? LOSE in this instance

Trite question: does the toy arrive automatically or do you have to claim it? I reinsured through them a few weeks ago and nothing has arrived yet.

Galen, I also have the school teacher, Sergei, and the 'wide-boy' one in the leather jacket.....

I have a Sergei and one other!

Result! Just had a long complicated chat with BT and as a result my charges are being reduced by £9.81 per month for the next 12 months.
Yippee! It pays to complain...

I'm deeply envious of you owning a Baby Oleg, Marelli... I shall check them out when my car insurance is due.

My heart leapt up when I read that about plusnet, susieb, anbd then plunged down again when I read jamsidedown. Oh dear. Decisions, decisions, decisions. (One of the downsides of living alone is making decisions. I hate it!).
I am going to phone BT right now, while I'm feeling angry.

We saved over £150 by checking out and buying online car insurance, compared to last year with the last insurer. As a thank you from the comparison website I'm now the proud owner of a Baby Oleg Meerkat and his toy grub!

We had been with the same company for house insurance for years. When J died I gradually went through all the 'paperwork' and decided we had been paying too much. I cut the amount by half, contacted them and told them what I had done, hoping for a reaction - well hoping for them to match it. Nothing, niente, nada. So I had great pleasure in saying what I thought of them after 38 years of customer loyalty. So, anyone considering the CORNHILL Ins. company - don't even contemplate it . Since then I have changed all my insurances and like Flickety saved quite a considerable amount. It's a pain sitting at the laptop comparing prices, but definitely worth it in the end.

This year we have been reviewing our insurance policies for car and home.

When my car insurance came in I thought it was rather high so shopped around and found a cheaper deal. When I told my existing insurer that I would not be renewing my insurance because I had found a company who quoted a rate half their renewal rate, they immediately offered to match it. My response was that they should have offered me the cheapest rate they could manage right at the start and that I was not going to start negotiating with a company I couldn't trust.

We are now going through the same process on our house insurance. This has been a bit more complicated because, firstly, our house is a Listed Building and secondly, although we have never flooded, our village has twice in the last 10 years. As soon as we told our broker we had found a more competitive quote, she too went away and came up with a better deal with another company, despite having told us that our flood-status, meant no other company than the one we had been with for the last 10 year would consider insuring us with flood cover. We have found several companies prepared to insure our house and we are going to save ourselves £hundreds by moving to one of them.

I don't think its naughty to see something and then see if you can find a better price on the internet tegan that's just good common sense and using the resources available to you - I thought everyone did it. What we tend to do is ring up suppliers and see if we can get a better deal from them on the phone - this often works if you can quote someone else who is offering a better deal. We were about to leave EON after our current deal finished. There was nothing else on line so DH sent them an e-mail and hey presto a new deal appeared which was very appealing! With clothes I often put the item I like into the wish list or buy later box and more often than not a short time later a discount or sale price appears. I have rung Boden often and asked for a discount code if I don't happen to have one especially free p &p. I do think if a retailer is wholly on line like Boden they should be bearing the cost of postage - they only bury it in the pricing structure anyway but I don't like to think I am paying it directly. Its worth ringing for a code or looking up on line offer code sites.

Sad to say Plusnet are just as bad as BT re introductory offers. Their noticeboard is full of such grumbles and DH spent many a long frustrating hour on the phone with them. We were going to leave but hey presto the offered us a deal - so it would be interesting to hear if it works with BT!

henetha - try plusnet -its cheap - and owned by BT !!!!

My fault for that!

Sorry, just realised that this does not really come under 'style and beauty'.

I completely agree, Soutra. A good example of this is B.T. and how they are frequently advertising offers to new customers for broadband and phone. There is no incentive for loyal customers who have been with them for years. In fact, as I write this my blood pressure is going up and I realise that I am absolutely hopping mad with them!
So, tomorrow I will phone them and if they don't agree to decrease my outrageously expensive monthly fee then I will change to a new i.s.p.
But, and this is the reason I haven't done it before, is that I dread change and am afraid that a new server might be unrealiable whereas at least I have had steady service from BT with no problems.
So it's not an easy choice.

I try to work round it by getting someone else to order a catalogue, place the order and I then reimburse them . But I can see where you're coming from. Something I've started doing [which is a bit naughty of me] is, if I see something I like, making a note of it and then going online at home to see if I can get it cheaper [I think there's an app that you can use that does it for you if you have the right sort of phone]. I feel a bit bad doing it but it all started when I tried to take something back to a shop for a refund and they would only give me a credit note [there was nothing else in the shop that I liked, either].