About a month or so ago, we found ourselves in a situation where we had to have a face to face conversation with one of our service providers. During the conversation, we uncovered a discrepancy with one of the policies that we had with them. At the time, the customer service consultant suggested that we (at a later stage) sit down and review other service providers we subscribe to to keep things running in our household.

One of the services that we looked at was communication, connectivity and TV. These have been clumped all into one because we get all of these services through one provider.

In the first half of the year, our telecommunication provider came out with new product offerings with all in one unlimited broadband, TV and voice and new hardware. The introduction of the new offering meant that the one we were on at the time became a legacy offering.

When comparing the legacy offering to the comparative new offering, the latter came in $20 cheaper per month. That equates to a saving of $240 a year for signing up for the new offering! That was good enough reason to consider signing on to the new plan.

Getting rid of a $10 a month landline

We receive our monthly bill via email and as it is a fixed amount, it is settled via direct debit. That said, we never really take a close look at it and over time have forgotten all that it is we are paying for. In the review process, we took the time to take a close look at our bill and one product that stood out was VOICE.

We can’t remember the last time we made a call using the landline or even heard it ring. Each of us in the household has a mobile device which we use for voice calls which effectively made the landline redundant.

With our provider, voice came in at $10 a month which meant that we were effectively giving them $120 a year for nothing.

With all of that information at hand, it made economic sense to make the easy decision of getting rid of our landline.

The whole exercise of reviewing our connectivity and entertainment plan resulted in the following actions and total yearly savings per action:

We learnt two lessons from this exercise which were:

1. Have a regular review of services, once a year seems to be a recommended timeframe and reasonable enough time interval
2. Stay up to date on new service offerings and review them to see if they would be better suited to your needs

In the long run, you should end up being in a position where you have products and services best suited to your needs and in a situation where you are not spending money that you don’t need to. The money saved can be put to better use or simply transferred into a savings account.

Are you still paying for a landline that you don’t need?