Heather Allen

Talking on the phone is literally the worst. Sometimes it has to be done, but when I wanted to reduce my phone bill, I didn’t speak to anyone in person or over the phone. Most of my experience was with the virtual chat on the Verizon website. I found that asking for help usually led to a reduced bill in some form. To be clear, the title of this blog post is kind of snappy, but this is not some scheme to reduce your bill overnight, rather some general advice that worked for me.

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For approximately two years my cell phone bill used to be $107; I was paying for the plan, plus my monthly phone fees. In October 2017, I finally finished paying off my iPhone, which reduced by bill by $33(!). Then a few months later, in March, I was browsing the website looking at available plans, and saw that there was a plan with a lower monthly rate. I chatted with someone in customer service via the online chat function about ways to reduce my bill. I had tried to do the math to see if it was beneficial to move to another plan and they walked me through the cost break down. The customer service rep offered to move me to a new plan that was available which cost less money than my current plan, and added 5GB of data with no further cost, which was up from 2GB. I still am not charged for texting or phone calls, and my new 5GB of data has rollover. My bill came to $62.

This June, I contacted customer service again because I realized I had been missing out on an employee discount offered through my employer. It’s something that I should have been getting for the past three years, but when I bought my phone in October 2015, the Verizon store employee told me I didn’t qualify so I never looked into it afterward. It was only when I received a memo from my company that I realized this was something I needed to pursue. Speaking with someone in person didn’t yield much in 2015, but chatting with customer support on Verizon helped implement the additional discount. My bill is now $53!

My big take away is that online customer service chat support is very easy to talk to and they are extremely helpful in answering questions and getting me available discounts. I have been with them nearly 5 years and I think that loyalty is finally starting to pay off.  I find that just asking if there is an available cheaper plan or any discounts goes a long way. It’s also important to be nice and not approach customer service as if you deserve discounts because they are less likely to be able to help this way.

In the long term, I’ll need to get a new phone sooner rather than later, but at least my bill has been reduced since I was last paying for a phone that it won’t be as high as $107 again!