Chapter One: “We will see if you get to speak to the Real Boss.”
Recently my wife and I were asked if we wanted to change our TV and internet provider.
Having some knowledge of the headaches involved in changing providers because of having done this before I thought I was ready for any curve ball that might be thrown my way.
Well I was wrong! As you will soon find out.
As most of you may find, you may not get to choose when you want to evaluate the option of changing providers. Though of course I had seen commercials for Verizon, the thought of researching the benefits of changing my TV and internet provider was not at the top of my things to do. As with most things like this, you may find that you are thrown into this decision-making venture by a very persistent door to door sales person. This is the case in my scenario and of course on this particular Saturday it was at a very inconvenient time, and though I try to be polite to those that are charged with going door to door selling things, at this moment I was deep into a “Honey Do List” Weekend Bonanza.
Because of this I told the Verizon Salesman and his Trainee that “It was not convenient at this time”. And of course, being a good trainer, the salesman said, “That’s cool, we will stop by tomorrow around this time, have a good day”. Very smart … and not too pushy. The salesman saw I had no time for his sales pitch and instead of trying to push it on me he decided to duck and move to another day with a see you tomorrow and a “Have a good day” instead of “Will that work for you?”. I was far too busy and conscience of not being rude to argue with this, plus the chances of these guys showing back up on my street on a Sunday in November in Pittsburgh…. I didn’t think they would do it. But as I said earlier “I was wrong”.
Sunday arrives and believe it or not around the same Bat Time my Verizon Fios salesman and Trainee show up at my garage while I am still feverishly working on said “Honey Do List”. Though again it was not convenient I figured what they had to sell must really be worth it to them and maybe me. So, I gave them the opportunity to give me the pitch while I worked in my Garage. If they can sell me then they still must sell it to my wife and if they can fight through trying to convince me, they deserve a shot selling to the real decision maker.
The pitch went as follows:
- “Verizon has faster internet speeds” This guy took a shot right out of the gate that I cared more about internet speeds than TV. He was right. I had been experiencing slower speeds lately in my Garage office and had been monitoring the speeds during certain times of the day to determine if things were getting slower during peak times. Like on the weekends and between 4-8 pm during the week. This is because I had been seeing latency issues and was getting annoyed at it because it had started about 3 months ago and I was paying for higher speeds.
- “You are one of the last people on your street still with Comcast” Trying to sell me with the old Peer pressure. Though it might have been a good tactic for most I pride myself on not being a normal guy. My wife says I am an Alien though she will not tell me what planet or solar system I am from. Hard sell failure, but nice effort.
- “Comcast is about to raise their prices” Hit him in the pocket book. This was smart, who doesn’t care about the cost? Maybe Steelers or Penguins players don’t but they can afford to pay somebody to listen to sales people.
- “You have 30 days after installation to change your mind” again Smart, but I have been through this before and it is like closing the barn door after the horses got out. Once you have switched, it isn’t easy to go back, and who really has time to schedule more installers to come back into your house and put everything back the way it was. Not to mention the phone number ported over but we will talk about this little nightmare in chapter 2.
Ok, so Pocket book and Internet speeds, they have earned some time with the “Real Boss”. We now will go to speak with my wife.
Now, I am not sure at this point what they are expecting. The only feedback I see are smiles that they are getting to go inside out of the cold. I am sure that they have had to talk to many wives about switching to Verizon, but my wife is very competent in weighing the pros and cons in her own way. We didn’t get to be the last people on the street to switch away from Comcast by being flippant about our decisions. We sucked the life and very money out of Comcast over the years by leveraging the competition against Comcast. Comcast has had to fight to keep us and Verizon will have to fight to take us away.
I hope you look forward to Chapter 2. This is where we get down to the very hard sell I learn more about the Differences between Comcast and Verizon than any other God-fearing person should have to know.