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You catch more flies with honey…

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Alright, here’s a funny story from the other side of the phone. I used to work in a call center for around 5 years, so I have no problem picking up the phone and calling in to speak with you jerkwads. My girlfriend laughs and says that I always find some way to say “hey, I used to work in a call center” to the call center agent every time I get on the phone, lol. Which is a slight exaggeration. (Read on to see how I did it this time, lol)

My girlfriend and I have car insurance with one of those big name companies, and we signed up for the Snapshot app to get the discount. We both changed to this same insurance companies at the same time, under two different policys. I changed 2 months before she did, so I am ahead by 2 months in the billing cycle and lifetime cycle as a customer.

The snapshot finished and told us the results. It saves me $200, and saves her $300 (and we both got A’s. Guess who had a higher insurance premium to begin with, lmao). Ok cool.

So I ignore it the notification. I keep paying my bill. My monthly payment changed in some trivial fashion so I didn’t even notice. After the snapshot and with the new 6 month renewal of my policy. Why? I dunno that’s part of the reason why we called into their call center. Stupid insurance, stupid state I live in that hikes up their premiums. Stupid Everything. Whatever. I digress.

My girlfriend gets her snapshot results today and gets excited it says $300 saved. Awesome! $300 Divided by the 6 month plan is some serious moolah, $50 bucks off! So she goes to check her future bills and it’s actually higher by $15 dollars!

What the fuuuuuck? Ok that sucks. Let’s call and find out what’s going on.

So my girlfriend had one chat session and 2x phone calls to the call center today. She gets nasty on the phone. She’s not pleasant when she gets confrontational like that.

Turns out there’s a one-per-lifetime discount for e-filing, and that falls off after the first renewal. And insurance premiums went up across the board. And my girlfriend’s insurance was so high that after the price hike, loss of the eSign discount, and after gaining the snapshot benefits…. She still ended up seeing an increase of 15×6=90

Whereas I just barely squeaked by and saw a much much smaller increase of 5×6=30.

So as we’re laying in bed, she calls progressive one more time. I coach her before the call “ask for an itemization of the bill. Including the eSign discount. Snapshot discount. And just be polite with the agent and ask to go over everything, and see what’s going on. They’re people too. They’re going to help if they can”

So my girlfriend calls and has the nastiest conversation. Gets transferred twice. And hangs up the phone and says “well they can’t do anything. That’s all they said.”

So I’m sitting here wondering all these same things myself. Because I saw an increase on my own bill and I wanted to know what’s up.

So I call in, and get a different agent. I’m calling for my OWN policy. I speak to the agent exactly the same way I would want to be spoken to.

I politely ask all my questions. She needs to put me on hold to get an itemization of my eSign discount, I tell her “no problem! Go ahead thank you for telling me I’ll be happy to hold”. All that stuff.

She can’t help me out, but I continue the conversation about the itemized bill, the increase/decrease. I ask her if we about escalation pathways up to another department to talk to the actual insurance underwriters. She offers me a supervisor escalation but I decline it… We’re both being completely respectful and having a positive conversation.

Out of exasperation I say “alright I get it. But how else can I lower my bill? I am not prepared to bundle any other insurance plans in with your company. What other options do we have? I work from home, and I drive so rarely I only fill up my gas tank once a month!”. At this point she laughs and says “oh yea that’s the blessing about working from home” and I laugh and say “yea, speaking of which, your smoke detector is low on battery, don’t you hear the beeping?” And she starts laughing hysterically.

So then she asks me “we’ll have you moved, or changed job title? These are things that can effect your insurance rates”, so I say “hhrmm…yes… I did change job titles. I’m now in Database administration. IT internet technology. Does job title really effect my insurance rates??” And she’s like “yes it does…..hold on let’s see….. Ok yup. Look at that! We can save you about $20 per month due to the change in Job Title, based on the IT industry”

Wow. I even laughed and said that was a very unexpected pleasant surprise! Then she tells me how I can change insurance (reduce one coverage. Raise another. Same coverage level. But another $20 off. ) I politely declined, saying that I need to research how that would really effect my coverage before I commit to a change like that, but I appreciate the advisement.

As she was doing her call closing I thanked her for her time, and I said “I’ll be happy to take any sort of NPS survey..make sure you send one my way” (haha. always find a way to slip that in somewhere).

I had her on speaker the whole time. My girlfriend’s face went from smug to jaw dropping astonishment as the call went on. After I hung up the phone all I said was “you catch more flies with honey than vinegar.”

This happened about 2 hours ago. She still isn’t talking to me.

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