Make me an offer!

Verizon has been calling me almost daily for the last few weeks, trying to get me to renew our contract since our previous agreement ended in September. We've been month to month since then. I really have no good reason to renew right now - our phones work perfectly fine and our current plan isn't lacking.

Finally, today, I talked to the Verizon rep. Or, rather, she talked to me for 9 minutes. She was offering 700 minutes, 200 more than we have currently. But we don't use the 500 we have now. I explained to her the billing errors which were likely skewing the numbers she saw for our recent usage. I told her about the runaround we got with our new every 2 and new phone eligibility.

She was offering a phone upgrade, for $79.99 less a $50 mail-in rebate. I told her my phone works fine right now, and the only compelling reason I would have for replacing it is if I could go Bluetooth and get a wireless headset. The new phone she was offering does have Bluetooth, but I'd have to buy my own headset for an extra $49.99.

I continued to rebuff her, and she just wasn't interested in making me a compelling offer to renew, and that was that. Had she offered me a better phone, or tossed a free Bluetooth headset into the deal, I might have been interested.

I did some research and it looks like we can go to Cingular, drop $10 from our monthly bill, move up to 550 minutes/month, and get new phones in the process. I'm not chomping at the bit to switch services, but it's good to know we can jump ship easily. I'm just shocked that Verizon wasn't interested in trying very hard to get me to renew the contract. I may call them back, present them with this research, and see if they'll make a good counter-offer to attempt to keep us another 2 full years.