I recently called my telephone company to ask if there was a cheaper plan for my internet and phone. They put me through to the loyalty department. The man told me that because I had been a customer for 4 years I could get a land line with any or all features for $10.10 per month. I quickly said change me over. I was paying 30 dollars for 3 features and the land line. I now pay $10.10 per month. He also said this is not a 6 month promo this is basically ongoing forever. So if you call the loyalty department of your phone company you may be able to save a lot.
I think this is common knowledge, however; I'd say you got a pretty great deal. In the United States, you'll usually ask to speak to the retention department, which tries to convince customers to stick with that particular service provider. They'll usually cut you a limited-time discount, but long-time customers will sometimes receive promotional rates without an expiration date. Landline services are easier to get discounts for because they're becoming less used by consumers, but the profit margins on such services are high.
I noticed that the offers are quite good in the US when it comes to landline phones. Over here we used to be subscribed to our landline phone company for 31 years, and we never got any discount if that kind. I guess they know that they would lose a huge profit if they offered that.
Many cable companies are trying to kill off their land line business on purpose. It has something to do with government subsidies and laws around monopolies and other crap like that. They are basically replacing their previous copper wire land line services, with digital land line phone services that instead run through the cable wires or fiber optic cables. Part of the issue was back in the day, they were forced to share their copper lines with competing companies, such as services for home alarm systems. So the cable companies can offer their own home alarm services, but they also have to open their lines up to any other businesses that come along and want to compete with them. What they are doing now, which is kind of sneaky, is purposefully make it look like their land line side of the business is losing money severely so the government eases up on some of their laws and requirements. What they are really doing is just moving those customers over to the cable line phone service and not counting them technically as "land line" anymore, it's instead called "digital phone". The other problem with this, is many of their competitors for services like home alarms, rely on those copper lines, which the cable companies are not servicing anymore. So if the lines go bad then their competitors services are crippled too, and they can turn around and offer their customers their own home security services which runs through their cable lines, that they are not required to share with their competitors.
Yeah, you don't even have to be a loyal customer at this point to get that. Verizon gives you a landline for $10 now when you also have cable/internet, so you might as well get all 3 if you have any reason for a phone at all.
