Cancel is the new please
Ali told me that she wanted me to call up ADT to finally make the arrangements to have the cellular option added to our alarm system. We have been paying for alarm monitoring that basically has not functioned since I switched over to Vonage ages ago. I knew they charged around $250 for the add on that allows the system to use the cell network to call in instead. I wasn’t thrilled about the idea but Ali wanted it.
So I called ADT up and asked about the cell option, the rep said it was $258 to have the option added PLUS an additional $12 a month monitoring fee. Well the $258 didn’t bother me nearly as much as the additional $12 a month. I emailed Ali and told her about the charges and how I thought it was excessive. That set off a mini e-argument over email about the situation. I made my pitch to Ali that we should just drop the monitoring altogether after listing a half dozen reasons we didn’t need it. Surprisingly, she actually conceded that I could just drop it, her big thing was she didn’t want to be paying for a monitoring service we weren’t even receiving.
So I call ADT back to tell them I was cancelling the monitoring service. I got a guy on the phone named Shawn ironically. I explained to him how we had Vonage and how that broke monitoring for us. I told him I was aware of the cellular option but the costs of it were excessive in my opinion and I would rather just cancel.
Well evidently asking to cancel the service is like pulling the golden ring. All of a sudden he was able to offer me an incredibly better deal. Instead of the hardware costing $258 he could let me have it for $75. On top of this he would be able to add the cellular monitoring to the account without ANY additional monthly monitoring charges. I was a bit flabbergasted. Initially I indicated I still wanted to cancel and that I was a bit annoyed that it took me threatening to cancel to be offered such a deal. However before the rep cancelled the monitoring I reconsidered and told him I would take the deal. I knew it would make Ali happy and the financial pinch was now very minor.
Lesson learned, if you are willing to go to the point where you are ready to cancel a service there is a good chance you will be able to get a significantly better deal. A Facebook buddy of mine chimed in a similar story when I posted about the Sirius online listening surcharge bullshit. When the fee was announced he called up Sirius and told them he was ready to cancel. They kept his business by immediately throwing him a $75 credit.
To be honest if you want a nearly as effective security system for little cost and no monitoring fee, simply hop on ebay and buy several ADT signs and post them around your doors and windows. Unless the potential robber is blind, he will pick another target.
So we have Spook back at home but not much is resolved. Evidently when I told Ali about Spooks eating incident yesterday morning Ali was still fuzzy from sleep. As a result she told the vet the cat wasn’t eating but didn’t indicate that it once again was an obvious mouth pain issue. I found this out later in the day after the vet had already drawn blood to test for some other ailment. I talked to the vet and told her about the cats obvious pain when eating and that I was sure the problem is still in her mouth.
The vet said the next step would be feline dental x-rays, one problem, she doesn’t have a feline dental x-ray machine. Further more she wasn’t quite sure who had one. Spook could possibly have something inflamed below the gum line, similar to the pain a person has when they require a root canal. So now the vet is supposed to try to find us somewhere to go. In the meantime we are back to giving the cat pain meds to ease the discomfort. Her plate of tuna was eaten this morning so maybe the pain meds will at least buy us some time.
I was a bit surprised this morning when I saw this comment come in regarding one of my multiple “RCI sucks” rants. Evidently I am far from being alone in my thinking that RCI rips it’s customers off, in fact there has been a class action suit against them in the works for several years. Following the link in the comment will tell you all about it.