Thanks Bell
As Michael James pointed out a while ago Bell Had Made a Generous Offer for me to forgo my settlement from the CRTC’s ordered rebate for Bell Customers however, I decided to keep the rebate money in hand and last week I received a nice cheque for $67.41. Evidently, I could have received up to a $90 rebate, but I am quite pleased with the $67.41 cheque and was glad I didn’t take Bell up on their offer. Bell will upgrade its network with other money from this investigation, so its network may improve thanks to the CRTC ruling, but that remains to be seen.
Did I fall into the Found Money Trap? Well kind of, I did take my wife out to dinner with the money, since we hadn’t been out just the two of us for a while (remember I am not a Patron Saint of Finances, I sometimes give into the avarice that is found money sometimes too). Remember, as I tell my kids, Do as I say, NOT as I do.
Next Steps
Currently my Bell Home Phone bill is a ludicrous $68 a month, which given I barely make any long distance calls, but do use the ludicrously expensive features of:
- Call Waiting
- Call Display
- Visual Call Waiting
- Long Distance Block of Minutes
This seems prohibitively large in comparison to what the market says I should pay.
My next step is to talk to the Bell Customer Retention folks and see if they want to keep me as a customer, or whether they would like me to go over to Rogers to get their deal (which adds up to about 1/2 to 4/7 of what I currently pay).
Does anybody else know of good deals for existing Bell Customers, or are they only for new Bell Customers?
Good news on the rebate man!
I think we currently pay about $40 with Rogers, same features above. Unfortunately I don’t know of any Bell deals, I switched away from Bell about 3 years ago and haven’t bothered to price shop since.
Let us know what you find out though!
I remember reading something about what percentage of found money gets spent quickly and it varied with the amount “found”. Surprisingly, over a certain range of amounts, people tended to spend more than 100%. I’m guessing that your dinner cost more than $67.41 and that you are one of the ones spending more than 100%.
Surprisingly no, I actually ended up spending about $55.00 (with taxes and tip), and had money left over to pay for parking the next day at work (bleh!).
Agreed that found money usually gets spent up to and more than 300% of it’s actual value.