I rediscovered an old trick a bit by accident
I signed up for a “chair workout” app last year called Muscle Booster to ease myself back into exercising.
There was a $22 for three months trial and then it went up to $66 per three months.
And then the app stayed closed most of the time.
Now it was nothing more than a leak in my bank account.
The road to hell and all that
I decided to cancel the app because I had RGI (Really Good Intentions), but only used it a handful of times during those three months.
(Somehow I managed to decide this the day before it was set to renew. Lucky me!)
Like a lot of things, I was hoping that the fact that I was paying for it would rouse me into action. That wasn't the case.
So I did catch it before it renewed and I went through the cancelation process.
They made me an offer I couldn't refuse
But like any good business, they tried to keep me on as a customer. A screen popped up asking why I was cancelling.
It gave me a number of options.
One of those options was it was too expensive.
That's the one I chose.
I'm glad I did. What they did afterwards was knock 84% of the price off. I would only be paying a little over $10 every three months.
So I can handle that.
Their stated motivation? They wanted me to give it another shot because they wanted me to get healthier, and if the price was the problem, they could fix that. I'm getting the same product now, but for much less.
The motivation from their side? It's a lot less costly to keep a current customer than it is to find a new one.
They priced it so that it was difficult for me to leave. The cost of them providing the material is minimal anyway. It's a system of modules they've put together and it runs basically by itself. So it was a clear value proposition for them to give it to me for anything they could get out of me.
Threaten to leave and you get deals
This is a current example of an old trick.
When a renewal period came up, the trick was to threaten to leave. At that point, a whole bunch of offers magically came on the table.
You could:
- Keep the membership for less
- Keep the credit card account with all of the perks but with a waived annual fee
- Keep going with a more right-sized product with a lesser cost
Some businesses have turned the tables and put blockers up for cancelling. This is different. Muscle Booster didn't do this to me. I could have cancelled easily.
So you can take this to whatever length you want:
- Renegotiate cell phone plans
- Get better deals on insurance
- Snag a better gym membership
What else can you get simply by heading for the door?
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Header Photo by ThisisEngineering on Unsplash
