How I got everything I wanted at the Telus store.
First let me state up front that we have been with Telus for 15 years now and in general they are very accommodating to us. That said, I undertook what I realized would be an audacious move yesterday in trying to procure a new iPhone 6 Plus. We have had our current 2 year contract for almost the full term so we are well within the “retention” period where they are likely to give you something to keep you. I called up the Telus lady, put on my lying voice and proceeded to tell her that my buddy who comes to the hospital and does the corporate rate plans told me he could get me the following:
An iPhone6 and an iPhone 6 Plus both 64GB for $500. That is a plan included retail value of $1080. God only knows what the actual retail without a plan is. I also said he had offered us the same pair of phones with 16GB for $250 which have a retail with plan value of $830. To put this on perspective I was asking for a 54% discount on the 64GB and a whopping 70% discount on the 16GB. In all honesty I was not optimistic but it was worth a shot. The first thing to come out of the lady’s mouth had me concerned when she reminded me (I actually know this) that Apple doesn’t discount their hardware. Although I knew she had me we were both still unsure if we had the win so we continued. She said there wasn’t much she could do and would have to pass me to retention which is what I expected. From that point I had to try and convince them that I was really in a position to bargain and to cover my tracks I told them that the offer was for the same monthly payment that I have now which (hold your breath for this one) is around the $200 a month mark. There are personal reasons for this, we have a distributed family and require certain features but anyway that’s what we are looking at. I told her maybe my “buddy” had found a way to reduce the monthly to make the discount happen and that was when things really took off.
To make a long story short, she agreed to waive some of the fees, including $10 a month off our data but to bump our usage to 4G from 3G and since our usage seems to peak at just over 2G on a normal month I was happy with this. That alone was going to be another $240 off the phones plus the $100 per handset discount she was able to give me for loyalty. All in all, the number she was aiming for was $580 between the retail cost of $830 and the “friend” price of $250. I told her if she could come close enough we would be good. Her total so far of $440 was pretty amazing. I did the old “I’m not sure” thing and she went away and came back with another idea that we could save by not taking the insurance which is just not something I am willing to do at this point. But I thought her efforts were good enough and we went ahead with the package. In the end I did have to pay out my balance since my phone was much newer ($135) and of course the sim cards are extra.
In summary I was able to get an iPhone 6 for Nicole and an iPhone 6 Plus for me with an extra 1G of data per month for around $350 (compared to the retail of $830) with the savings coming from the data plan over the 2 years. All in all not a bad day of negotiating.