Martin Lewis has urged households to try one simple trick to cut bills. Speaking on The Martin Lewis Podcast, the money-saving expert said that over 50% of survey respondents said that the trick worked in their favour in four sectors. These included cutting costs across bills in broadband and insurance.
Martin Lewis said that it’s “one big trick everyone needs to know”. He added the four most important sectors to try this in are broadband and digital TV, car and home insurance, mobile phones and breakdown cover.
The expert spoke about the importance of haggling with call centres throughout the video.
He said that it’s always about “politeness and charm and trying to win them to your side. It’s never about aggression.”
He went on to tell customers exactly how to handle the battle that is trying to cancel a service.
The money-saving expert said: “So, onto the most important thing and that is, when you ask to cancel, while they may say they’re putting you through to the disconnections department, internally that will be known as customer retentions because those people have a job to try and keep your custom.”
Mr Lewis explained what customers’ key next steps should be.
“They have much more deals, discretion [and] authority to give you much bigger savings so, if you’re not succeeding at first then say, ‘I’d like to cancel.’”
The expert explains that, then, as customers get put through to customer retentions, it becomes “a whole different ball game”.
If the haggling doesn’t go to plan, Mr Lewis tells households exactly what to do next.
“If you’re saying to me ‘But I’m not sure I really do want to cancel’, don’t worry. If they say, ‘we’ll cut you off now, we’ll cancel now’, you just say, ‘I need to first check with my husband, my wife, my boyfriend, my girlfriend, my pet pigeon’,” he adds.
He reminds viewers that they can always tell the call centre that they plan to get back in touch at a later date.
The expert concludes the video by saying, “Though again, if they’re not giving you the deal that you want and you can find it cheaper elsewhere, you may as well ditch and switch.”