How to Keep Your Broadband Bills Down | AD

*This is a collaborative guest post

Bills are a fact of life and it’s easy to just keep paying those direct debits and standing orders without taking the time to investigate whether or not you could be saving money, but if you spend an hour doing a bit of research and making a few calls it might just turn out to be the most financially rewarding sixty minutes you’ve ever spent.

Pay for your broadband and landline service together

In most cases you need a landline to get broadband, but if you buy your broadband and home phone service together you’ll get a much lower price than if you buy them singly. Beware of apparently cheap broadband deals which then require you to take out an expensive line rental.

Compare prices

Price comparison sites can put into perspective what the market rates generally are for what you’re getting. New customers are invariably offered more enticing deals than the ones available to existing customers, so if you are on a roll over contract you are likely to be paying far more than you need.

Are you paying for a level of service you don’t need?

Broadband packages are usually marketed in terms of unlimited data and high speed but are you paying for a level of service that you don’t use, and could you save money by having a package with limited data usage and a slower internet speed. Standard packages usually offer a speed of up to 17 mega bites per second. You can check your current internet speed here.

Check reviews on broadband providers

You want the best deal that you can get but you also want to know that once you’re locked into a contract that you will get a consistently reliable service. Find out what users think by researching some of the online review sites which range from technical reviews by experts to customer experiences. Always look at a range of review sites before making a decision on whether to switch providers.

 Negotiate

This comes easier to some of us than others, but when it comes to getting the best deal on your bills it’s a life skill you can’t do without. First, you need to make sure that you’ve got some solid data to back up your argument. Have your old bills to hand so that you’re not working from memory and be polite but firm.