Bribes are effective
This week I ended a long term relationship, all for the money. I can’t help feeling a little dirty. Mrs VB and I are one of those households that on the whole stick with the status quo for no other reason than we can’t be bothered. We are lazy rather than loyal.
We have better things to do like sitting in front of the fire with our feet up. We’d rather be chumps than champs because wising up is hard.
So we stay with our bank or our electricity supplier or our phone/ broadband company, not because we are incredibly impressed with their service or product but because all the red tape involved in changing sounds like too much trouble.
I have been with the same bank for about 45 years. We haven’t changed our internet supplier for 10 years and we have been with our electricity supplier since Southpower became Meridian.
Our overall business as a household is not huge but it’s steady, we pay the bill on time and we require very little maintenance. All these suppliers know we are lazy about shopping around and take us for granted, and we don’t much care.
We are undoubtedly part of a large sleepy section of the population which, on the basis of two recent events, has suddenly been discovered.
The other Saturday Mohit came calling. He was neat and polite and knew he had about 30 seconds to persuade me not to send him on his way. Although the brands Contact and Rockgas were embroidered on his jacket, it later turned out he worked for a company called Sellutions which is a contractor to Contact.
Anyway Mohit wanted to give us money. He was initially offering a $150 credit – he upped this to $200 – and a reduced electricity bill if we switched to Contact. He wasn’t offering cheaper power, in fact the power was more expensive, but the savings came from a prompt payment discount which made all the difference.
The electricity price would be fixed for two years. The saving worked out to about $20-$30 a month.
Now I believe in loyalty as long as I think we are getting a reasonable deal.
For instance I always go to the same tyre shop. I like them and they always seem to give me a good deal. I don’t even go and check other prices. I like to think they recognise me and think I’m worth looking after. I recommend them to other people.
I even like my bank at the moment mainly because I have a lovely guy at a particular nearby branch who I can email and talk to and who is efficient.
Meridian hasn’t exactly been solicitous in our relationship, although it communicates regularly with us through television advertisements and paper bills. No presents or credits though, just steady price rises.
But we’ve been together a long time and, well, that’s got to mean something in our ephemeral world. But here was the
Mrs VB and I are one of those households that on the whole stick with the status quo for no other reason than we can’t be bothered.
generous and flirtatious Contact offering us $200. All I had to do was sit there for 30 minutes listening to Mohit and I was $200 richer with further savings in the wind. Easy, perhaps too easy.
I guess my only reservation was that competition is not supposed to be like this. It should be more than just a bribe for your business, but I suppose all incentives are bribes of a sort. You have to wonder where this all ends with companies trying to outdo each other’s bribes to get market share. It also highlights how vulnerable companies are because if Mohit really gets going he will destroy Meridian.
I felt (Mrs VB was out) in the end that Meridian needed to be punished for taking us for granted and not working on our relationship so that when it came to the crunch we would feel reluctant to leave.
Only when it realised we were leaving did Meridian try to make up. We got a nice phone call from a woman who said it would be sorry to lose us after such a long association.
The company would match the credit or bribe, offer a bigger discount than we had previously got and freeze the power charge for two years.
It couldn’t quite match Contact but, hey, what about old times?
Well what about if it hadn’t been for Mohit we would still be getting a bum deal from our trusted supplier. Too late chum.
Hardly was the ink dry on our new contract with Contact when another letter came in the post. ‘‘Hi there,’’ it said cheerily.
‘‘Get better broadband and $300 joining credit,’’ the first line said.
The offer was from Vodafone offering unlimited broadband data and a home phone plan. I had no idea what our current supplier was charging but crikey, $300 for switching the tracks? What could be wrong with that?
I’m left wondering if some computer algorithm has detected old lethargic stick-in-the-muds like us and realised we are an untapped market that just needs a bit of love and a bribe.
It’s somehow appalling but keep it coming.