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Comment by ui-explorer12 | Hacker News Reader

The same thing happens when you've been with a mobile/telecom/etc company for a long time. They milk you for every penny they can get and give all the promo pricing to new customers. The pay sales higher commissions for new sign-ups and treat existing loyal clients like garbage.

It really bugs me to have to waste the time to change providers for everything every ~2 years, but I'd feel like an idiot if I left thousands of dollars per year on the table. It's a stupid game, and companies are not immune.

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solid comparison. There's a parallel here to the employee/consumer side too.

A telco wants new customers. The way to do it is price, but lose if they cut everyone's price by 20% to gain 10% more customers. So price selectively.

Companies want to hire the most when the market is best (that's why the market is good). That might require 20% higher salaries, but they don't want the whole salary bill to increase. So, they selectively "price" new hires (and usually also people who get competitive offers).

In both cases, this also increases tension. Employees/consumers realize that they can get more if they switch. But switching is effort, and not everyone will make the effort. Not everyone will get completing offers either, so from the company's perspective it will always be more expensive to price match the best offer and offer it to everyone.

Btw, it also works the other way, in bad markets. In bad labour markets, the salary you have is probably better than the salary you can get, and new hires earn less.

Here, the company management hears about low wages their competitors pay and fume that it's impossibly hard to lower salaries across the board.

Overall, I don't think it's that bad a thing. It seems stupid when you're caught in it. Why do I need to change jobs/bank/plans just to get "market rate?" Systemically though, it helps create dynamism.

You aren't supposed to in a job or Telco plan for life.

"Btw, it also works the other way, in bad markets. In bad labour markets, the salary you have is probably better than the salary you can get, and new hires earn less.

Here, the company management hears about low wages their competitors pay and fume that it's impossibly hard to lower salaries across the board."

ohhh, you're a young one, no? Companies do that all the time, by closing entire divisions, calling it "restructuring" and making your above the market salary disappear over night by re-branding the positions. That's how they do it legally. Fire you because your position doesn't exists anymore and hire you again if you want at a lower salary doing the same job with same tools and even same PC/chair.

Many companies have done the sums on this and have dedicated churn teams. If you call and tell them you're planning to leave because you can get a better deal elsewhere they'll often match or better it in order to retain you.

It's a bit iffy since if everyone did this all the time the incentive to advertise low rates gets removed. As an individual bonus, though, it means you don't need to do all the paperwork it takes to change providers.

Most of the time it's as easy as calling and asking the first person you get connect to if you can "speak to retentions". I've always been put straight through.

I was able to get a better deal when I started the move process. After starting that the churn team seamed more receptive to my arguments ;)

Some years ago, I accidentally ordered two new phones from different providers at the same time. AS I had a 14 day 'cool off' I phoned one company to cancel, as I didn't like that phone, and they offered me a much better deal. I then phoned the other to pretend to cancel and got a reduction in my bill there!

Are you price or convenience sensitive?

Take groceries as an example. My sister in law wants convenience. She rolls into Whole Foods on the way home from work and drops $50 on stuff for dinner. My wife is price sensitive... she does coupons and shops aggressively. Last year those savings yields almost $15k.

Over the ~8 years I've been a customer, my mobile provider has upgraded my free SMS/MMS plan from 5 hours and 5GB to unlimited hours and 40GB. The price has gone from ~$15 to ~$20 and that's it.

There's no way for me to get the same plan at that price if I was a new customer.

You are lucky. Sadly, this is very much the exception, although we can only hope it becomes more common. Human nature being what it is, people hate change, so companies can gouge existing users and offer incentives to new users to get them to change.

Recently my telecom has starting sending me regular texts (~3-6 months) "We've improved our service, you now have X more mb/month" "We've strengthened our infrastructure, your bill has been reduced from x/month to y/month, if you'd prefer more data you can reply with MOAR DATA to this text and we'll keep you at the same price and give you X more data."

Knowing that I'm continuing to upgrade while doing nothing increases my satisfaction and I haven't even shopped around since I switched to them.

Who are you with? This sounds really nice.

I'm with Hofer telecom https://www.hot.at/

Hofer is better known as Aldi, they're a big discount supermarket chain owned by a German family. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aldi

As a side note the same family (two brothers) also own Trader Joe's although it's a legally separate business.

I always call and ask politely for the latest offer to new customers, they always give it to me.

I did find it strange that I went to an energy rate comparison site and my current provider offered met 150 euros to stay for another year. Guess I should also call them every now and then.

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