Comic Strips

And then you lose any loyalty or banked credits because it's technically a "New contract"

I had 100GB of data credit in my pre paid phone plan. I got 2GB a month for $5 unlimited talk and text starting in 2014, it's a good deal for me. And you can imagine how long it took to bank 100GB even with the occasional free bonus data promo.... That plan was replaced with a more expensive one but somehow I got grandfathered in to the cheap plan.

So naturally I didn't want to rock the boat when I was getting my phone for $5 a month (their cheapest plan now is $20)

But they finally caught on and moved me to the $20 this year, they automatically transferred my data bank and sent me the new terms.

I double checked and while this was their cheapest monthly plan the 6 month plan would save me $80 in the long term so I called to get swapped and they said that I'd lose my data bank because it was a new contract. I argued that they changed my contract and I should have had an opportunity to choose which new contract my data gets transferred to.

I spent ages debating it, but there was nothing the rep or their supervisor could do to reward my 10 years with their company or compensate me for the service I had pre paid for (data) that they now expected me to subscribe to on their new terms to be able to access despite the contract I signed saying something totally different.

Their leading budget competitor had the exact same overall rate but for a yearly pre paid plan, and new customers got a 150GB data bank start up bonus. So my phone bill is paid up for the year now and I've still got a decent chunk of data and it didn't cost more than I was prepared to pay the old company.

(and yes I do use it, I'm a substitute teacher so I'm always using my phone as a hot spot when I'm at a different school)

I benefit from this because I'm always a returning customer.

Every time I have a service I haven't cancelled in awhile, I go cancel and resubscribe just to make sure they haven't hidden the cancel button.