So last time I’ve posted how frustrated I was with the Canadian cell phone industry. I decided to give Fido, the cell phone company I signed contract with, a call and see if they can lower my monthly fee. To my suprise, they offered me a special deal to keep me happy. Everyone can do this, you just need to learn a few tricks first.
I did some research first on RedFlagDeals, and I have noticed that Fido or Rogers will most likely offer the retention plan when someone calls to complain about expensive monthly bills.
They offered me this:
200 minutes day time, unlimited evenings starting 5 PM & weekends – $17.50
unlimited network calling between Fido and Rogers customers – $10
call display, voice mail, 2500 text messages – $10
6GB mobile internet data – $20
no system access fee and no 911 fee
The total per month now is $57.50. Very similar to what I was paying before. But now I have 6GB of data usage per month. Before I was paying the same price without any data. I have an iPhone 3G, so it was quite stupid not having a data plan. The $57.50 special retention plan with 6GB data is quite popular among Fido deal hunters on RedFlagDeals. I am very happy with this offer since I also got the new iPhone 3GS almost for free with my Fido Dollars. The only cons for this is I had to renew my contract and lock myself with Fido again for 3 more years.
Here is the trick. You don’t simply just call customer service and say your monthly bill is very high. They will try to convince you that it’s worth it. So the only way to do this is to make them think that you will break the contract and go with another company.
Regular customer service reps cannot offer you retention plans, only the retention program staff can. So you will need to tell your story atleast a few times. The shortcut to get to the retention program staff without saying a lot is to tell the regular cs rep that someone offered you a special $57.50 plan (or just make up a price) when you called earlier trying to cancel and you are calling back to confirm a few things. The rep will immediately transfer you to the retention program because he or she doesn’t want to deal with stuff like that. Once transfered, tell them the same thing. The retention staff may ask you why you wanted to cancel in the beginning. Tell them another company is having a promotion and you want to switch to save money in the long-run. They will most likely offer you a retention plan that is a good deal. Don’t accept it immediately, hesitate a little and pretent you are thinking. Lastly, accept the offer and start enjoying more minutes and features for less than what you paid before!
May 2012 Update: This method still works. With the amount of competition in Canada’s wireless market, giants like Rogers and Fido will do their best to cut you a deal in order to keep you.
While Wind Mobile and Mobilicity are offering unlimited plans without any long-term contract, you can mention their benefits when negotiating with Fido or Rogers. If you are good at it, you can get even crazier Fido deals or Rogers deals and get a top-of-the-line smart phone for free.
Rogers and Fido are still winners in terms of phone choices and reception, so try your best to get a deal from them with persistant calling and complaining.
What is your plan now? Do you have any success following the method posted above? Share it in the comments below!
i have made a deal with rogers also when wind came in cell phone industry,,, 500 mins anytime, eve start 6 pm, eveings and weekends free, 6 gb data, fido and rogers network free, caller id voice male 2500 texts ,,,, all under $70 after taxes…..it is pretty good deal for me…. time to move on!!
that’s pretty good!
other people are paying $100+ for that
Fido has a plan now that gives you unlimitted north american calling and txt 24/7 from any where in canada no long distance charges
@Glen…. Its true… 50 dollars north america calling… I’ve had it for a month now…
Just have a back-up plan … when you threaten to leave, make sure that if they don’t give you a good deal – then leave and join another carrier. I did that with bellmobility – I threatened to leave and when they couldn’t provide me a good deal I jumped ship to Fido. Now I use Wind and Koodo when I threaten Fido – they keep giving me unadvertised deals to keep my business!
I was called out of the blue one afternoon by the fido customer service rep.who I asked to call me back the next day,as I was working and could not spare the time.He actually called me the next day at time we agreed on and it was the same person Andre,whom I spoke with, he offered me something and when I told him I could get that much cheaper with wind or koodo he gave me unlimited voice plan 35.00 ,value pack for 11.00 which includes call display, call waiting etc. no system access fee,or 911 fee for a total of 46.00 plus hst about 5.00 =51.00 not bad in the scheme of things
PS
I forgot I also get unlimited text msg.
I got a similar deal in March 2009. I walked into a Fido store to buy an iPhone and get a data plan. As an existing customer I had to get my iPhone by calling customer service and I couldn’t get it through a store. I called CS from the Fido store. I got 200 anytime minutes, free minutes from 8 pm to 8 am, free weekends, 2500 text messages, enhanced voicemail, enhanced caller ID, unlimited Fido to Fido calls, 500 megs of data all for $50 + tax.
This was much better than my $40 voice plan on my Nokia 6020 so I went with it. After I hung up, the CS person at the store looked at the info and said, Yeah, that’s the standard plan the CS people keep in their back pocket over other phone when they can’t take your complaining anymore. He asked my if they gave me any deal on long distance and I said no, thinking to myself, you didn’t tell me to ask for that, cuz he was basically guiding me along the whole conversation.
So now it’s 2011, 2.5 years later and I am trying to get my wife on an iPhone with a better plan than mine. Fido won’t give her a deal cuz she’s considered a new customer and they won’t budge on some supposed 90 day restriction period for all new customers where there is no long distance, and no deals. After 90 days, a new customer can then negotiate. Yeah, OK – sign on for a 3 year plan and try to negotiate a better deal while locked in. Good luck. I’ll report back if I do get a better deal with Fido for my wife. Otherwise it means I didn’t and I won’t be renewing in 2012 with them.
You can just add her as another line under your account without a contract and be able to immediately call and negotiate or call and negotiate adding another line, they’ll give you an even better deal in that case.
@loo
You can just add her as another line under your account without a contract and be able to immediately call and negotiate or call and negotiate adding another line, they’ll give you an even better deal in that case.
Hi, just negotiated my contract with rogers today. the gave me
-300mins
-unlimited evenings/weekends from 6pm
-unlimted text
-MY10 canada wide
-1 GB
-Caller Id/ Voice Mail
-Free Incoming
- 50 Canadian long distance minutes
for about $58 + tax. Is this a good plan?
@ bobby
thats pretty good. how did u do it? was ur contract running down?
I’ve had this plan for a while from rogers retention
350 anytime minutes
v/m call display/2500 text messages
6pm early evening and weekends
unlimited incoming
my 5
call manager
100 canada wide long distance minutes
6 gigs data
$76.10 tax included
I got this plan with one of the big three
- 350 day time minutes
- evenings & weekends unlimited (starts at 6pm)
- call display
- call waiting
- call forwarding (3,000 minutes)
- unlimited north america texting
- unlimited Canada long distance
- local Telus mobility to Telus mobility free
- 6GB of data
- no system access fee, government recovery or any other silly fees
- no 911 charges
- $300 sign-up bonus!
$50 + GST/HST!
Is it a good deal?
they charge overage at 7cents a minute
and 5cents a MB
Calling USA 10cents min
usa roaming 40cents / minute
My wife and i have no term contracts now so i got a few plan quotes from telus bell and rogers..
Im currently with fido and called today and talked to retentions for 20 mins..
They offered this
Unlimited expanded calling 24/7. $45
unlimited text can usa
Free value pak
No access fee
No 911 fee
Still have my expensive 6 gig data plan. $30
My first call i did tell them i talked to telus and bell and gave them some plans they offered..
This is not bad im not jumpin for joy but cgeaper data and some longdistance would be sweet
By the way this would still be no term
What you guys think???
Cheers
Todd,
Is your plan “city Fido”? City Fido has a limited calling area, unless you live and work in the core of the city and never or rarely travel to the surrounding towns this maybe okay.
What do you mean by unlimited expanded calling? As well what is the value pack?
So in total you pay 45+30 = $75 + HST
(Does this include the system access fee / non-government regulatory recovery fee etc)?
Its the city fido, in vancouver but she extended the network to unlimited entire west coast….
Im going to call again today cause they gave me a confirmation number and try get it canada wide or free longdistance, same thing… And my data down or get rid of unlimited and try for 500 anytime and push for sone other perks…. Either way if they dont budge which im sure they will as our account averages $300 a month and no terms i will leave them
Cheers
Ohh ya, i just remembered i did ask her if it was city fido and she said it was not, just inlimited calling all of british columbia on rogers/fido network 24/7….she said they rarely ever do it… But im not sure. Cheers
Sorry to answer the rest of your question
Its unlimited calling on rogers extended network, all of british columbia
Unlimited text canada wide
Unlimited text to usa
Value pack.
Visual voicemail
Call display
Who called
Voice mail
Conferance call
Call forewarding
6 gig data
No access fee
No government fee
No 911 fee
$75.00
That’s a awesome deal! It almost sounds like a Mobility etc plan. Wow I didn’t think Rogers would give that much!
It’s even better than the telus deal above!
Hi, Does the entire west coast refer to BC?
I know some people in BC refer to Ontario as “East Coast” – but that is not correct as it does not have an Ocean. Newfoundland, and the other Maritime Provinces are East Coast!
called fido retentions 2nd time and there offer
200 anytime minutes
50 bonus minutes
unlimited fido to fido/rogers
unlimited evenings 5pm
unlimited weekends 5pm
2500 text#voicemail call display who called
6 gig data
no access fee
no 911 fee
$56.00
ip4s
i should take this and all 3 lines…
your $56 looks good, but what about long-distance in Canada
Thats what the home phones for… No need for long distance on my..
I called customer relations in rogers today, dumb asses did not do anything for me…First the customer rep says that she can’t forward to the customer relations because its only done for “canceling your phone”..She tried to help me out but couldn’t do anything for me. Then she forwarded me to her colleague which is obviously customer relations and I told her that I want to keep my old plan and other companies are willing to keep me in but I wanted to throw in some data for extra $10 bucks, and shes like no…I ve been with rogers for over 10 years never had such crap service
I have a pretty solid Plan with Fido but I’m still not satisfied, even though I haven’t called CS to complain for almost 8 months now.
For $65/mth+GST – unlimited LD anytime calling and Text to Anywhere in North Am from location with Fido network (i.e. Canada). But only 500MB data. Good deal?? Let me know if I can do better.
just got my iphone 4s last night and i’m paying 63+ tax.
My plan includes
- 200 weekday mins
- unlimited eve &wkends starting at 6pm
- call waiting
- call forwarding
- conference call
- 500mb
- iphone value pack = $12
i think that its a bad deal considering how i only have 500 mb. How do I convince rogers to lower my plan?
This is what I have on a 3yr term plan on my iPhone 4 i got from Fido last year.
Unlimited incoming/outgoing calls.
Unlimited texts & MMS Canada-wide.
Voicemail, Name/Call Display, Who called, etc.
500MB Data
They charge me $55+ 13%tax. Total: $62.15
It has been 1yr out of my 3yr contract but i will now call & see if i can upgrade my data to 6GB for an extra $5.
did you get the 6gb upgrade for 5$??
i want to try it too
ROGERS IS AWFUL DO NOT USE THEM
fido
unlimited incoming/outgoing
unlimited text
name display
call display
enhanced voicemail
no 9/11 system access fee
flex data plan
62$ tax included
Hey people!
Sorry haven’t checked back here for a while…
Anyone thought about switching to Wind, Mobilicity, or any of those unlimited plans?
Since my 3 year plan is also over now, I should think about staying with Fido or not…