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Gutenbergbible13 karma

This is a totally valid fear for somebody who hasn't done it before, but I promise you don't need to worry about it. They desperately don't want you to cancel service. The employees get docked if you do, so they make it as difficult as possible. Even if they SAY "okay, we're cancelling" sometimes they don't anyway. Even if they did, it's never effective immediately so you can just call back and get somebody to cancel the cancellation request.

If it gets too close for comfort, you can just say "listen, cancelling is a big hassle for me and I'd rather not—can you just help me with the price?"

-Ben

Gutenbergbible12 karma

You should! With something like that, they'll almost certainly cave if you stand your ground. I'd be surprised if you can't get it lower than it was before it went up.

In terms of biggest savings, there's a big gap between residential bills and businesses. The most we've ever saved an individual on a single bill was just shy of $7,000. They were getting completely ripped off by Verizon Wireless, paying for a ton of services that they hadn't used (international plans, hotspots they didn't even know they had, crazy stuff.) Plus another few thousand on their other bills.

In terms of charges reversed for a business, I think the biggest was an early termination fee a business was being charged when they were trying to move locations. We got that waived entirely, $70,000, plus negotiated another $25,000 or so off their new contract.

-Ben

Gutenbergbible10 karma

This is a great question; it depends on the services exactly. But there are two models I'd look at for reference: Google Fiber and Municipal Broadband. Neither of them are in it to make a big profit and both of them provide actually good service, rather than seriously limiting people for the sake of an extra buck.

Google Fiber currently does:

$50/mo for 100Mbps

$70/mo for 1Gbps

$140/mo for 100Mbps + TV

$160/mo for 1Gbps + TV

+$10/mo for home phone

Chattanooga's Municipal Fiber currently does:

$60/mo for 100Mbps

$70/mo for 1Gbps

$80/mo for 100Mbps + Local Channels

$130/mo for 100Mbps + Decent TV

$170/mo for 100Mbps + a bunch of channels + Home Phone

Granted, these are not super cheap pricing comparatively, but the level of service is much higher.

-Ben

Gutenbergbible6 karma

Yeah, that's the kind of thing that drives me crazy. They overcharge like crazy for infrastructure that is completely outdated. That's the kind of speed that Comcast gives for their low-income households at $10 a pop.

-Ben

Gutenbergbible5 karma

The nice thing about it is that it's really varied, since pretty much everyone over 18 has monthly bills. There are certain demographics we know are more profitable (men, 40+, high household income, etc.) but our goal is really to help everybody save money, so we tend to target a lot wider than that. When we started, since we were launching on Reddit, most of our clients matched that—young, male, early-adopter types.

We've also expanded a bunch since we initially started, so now we actively target businesses and organizations we think we can help as well, since we find everybody from mom & pop stores to startups are getting ripped off on everything ranging from trash to software.

We split the savings with people for the first year. Anything after that, they keep 100%. That way, it's a no-lose proposition since if we don't save people money, there's no charge to them.

-Ben