I signed up for AT&T U-Verse Internet a year ago and received a 1-Year Promotional rate of $24.95/month.  My year is up next month and I don’t want to pay the new rate of $46/month so I looked into my options.

How to Renegotiate your AT&T U-Verse 1-Year Promotional Offer

Comcast has a promotional rate of $39.99 for new customers (see their current offers here), which is better than $46 so I decided to call AT&T up at their customer service number, 800-288-2020, and put the pressure on them to give me a deal.  The first representative told me that they couldn’t help me but that I needed to be transferred to a different department.  I immediately asked for a direct number for the department they were going to transfer me to, just in case I ended up down a dead-end road, but they said there wasn’t a direct number.  Unfortunately for me I was transferred and this ended up in me not talking to a human and being told (by a recording) that the department was closed.  I called back again and talked to someone different who, after I told them what had just happened to me, they told me they could help me and that they would be the last person I needed to talk to.

Lesson 1: If you don’t go anywhere with the first representative hang up and call back.

I told the second representative that I was going to switch to Comcast if I didn’t get a new deal and they put me on hold for a bit and then said they could give me another promotional offer of $11.05 off the normal rate (which is $46), which puts me at $34.95/month for U-Verse.  That’s $5/month cheaper than switching (and I don’t have to configure another router to do my port forwarding) so I’m satisfied.

Lesson 2: Negotiate your rates, you never know what you’ll get if you just ask.

So make sure to call and ask what new discounts you can receive when your promotional offer is about to end, you can save yourself some money–I’m going to save $132.60 over the next year because of these two calls I made!