How I got £230 off fibre broadband – you can do it too

I love to haggle. It may be ‘un-British’ but this week it’s netted me a £230 saving on my broadband. Hopefully it can show you how easy it is to give it a go.

My fibre contract is up at the end of the month, so I called my firm’s cancellation department and told it I planned to downgrade one part of my subscription – which is true.

But the call centre agent tried to keep me as a customer – which I thought he would – and said he’d see what was available for my package as a whole.

I currently pay about £42/month for line rental, fibre broadband and a TV package as I’m on a good deal anyway – but that would’ve rocketed to £56/month from December if I’d done nothing.

So I asked politely if he could match the new customer offers. He didn’t quite, but it was nevertheless a blinding deal.

Under the new contract I’ll get the same for £38/month (reduced to £33/month for the first three) – I decided to keep the part of the pack I’d initially considered cancelling. That’s £441/year compared with the £672 I would have paid had the contract just rolled over.

There were no magic words. I just asked nicely – and I got.

The best bit was when I asked him to send an extra I ordered to my work address. When he clocked who I worked for he said something along the lines of: “Ah, I see what you’ve done.”