On two occasions, national surveys found that Comcast had the worst customer satisfaction rating of any company or government agency in the country, worse even than the Internal Revenue Service. Comcast recently got some particularly bad publicity when blogger Ryan Block recorded eight extraordinary minutes of a Comcast rep badgering Block to keep the Comcast account that his wife had called to cancel. (If you have the bandwidth, this is worth a listen). 

 In the flurry of bad press that Comcast received, several people shared on the internet that they were able to cut their Comcast bills by up to 33% by simply asking. If you subscribe to Comcast, you probably can too. Just call 1-800-266-2278 and ask nicely if they would please reduce your bill. If that doesn’t work and you are feeling bold, try some more aggressive strategies. Don’t bother with the Comcast website - it is filled with photos of actors pretending to be happy smiling Comcast customers, with no clear information about costs - kind of like bank and MFI adverts.

There is a point here, relevant to Savings Groups: Like other companies that sell their opaquely priced services to both rich and poor, Comcast’s pricing is highly regressive. Savings Revolution readers are an elite in terms of education, networks, access to information and confidence, and people like us are likely to get the secret discounts, while the poor are much less likely to find out about this opportunity, showing once again how hard it is for the poor to save. 

Thanks, John Schiller, for this idea.

Originally published 2014.