[magicalhippo]

> Do not be afraid to lose business from companies that are squeamish about paying you - in fact actively avoid such companies.

My boss said that the ones who have negotiated the best deals are the ones that are late paying, complain about just about every bill and will write angry letters when my boss index adjust pricing.

He said it taught him to never offer a really good deal for a regular customer (ie where the upside isn't very obvious).

[stavros]

I'm not sure that's the best takeaway here, in that it gets the causation wrong. It's not the deal that made the customer bad, it's that the bad customer insisted on getting a deal, whereas a good customer usually knows what quality costs and is prepared to pay.

The takeaway here is probably that the fix isn't just "never discount", but it's to screen for the kind of customer who treats a good deal as an invitation to strengthen the relationship.

[mikepurvis]

> strengthen the relationship

This is really the key. The "deal" has to have something for both parties. The vendor gets some kind of lock-in, prepayment, guarantee of future business, whatever it is, and in exchange the purchaser gets a discount.

The discount doesn't just come out of nowhere.

[magicalhippo]

> It's not the deal that made the customer bad, it's that the bad customer insisted on getting a deal

That was indeed the point, guess I conveyed it in a poor way.

[stavros]

That's OK, it's clarified now.

[danesparza]

This. A bad customer made a desperate situation worse because of their inexperience, neglect, shady motives, or a combination of the three.

[brabel]

Where I live the phone companies do this: you can get a discount every year by calling them and saying you will change companies unless they give you a better price. They always do and the only people paying normal prices are the ones who can’t be bothered to call them every year to request the discount!

[ghaff]

And dealing with a lot of that crap is more trouble than many of us want to be filling our days with. Micro-optimizations I might have done as a student I mostly don’t do today.

[busterarm]

In order to make out on this at my hourly rate, I would have to cap my phone time with the company to minutes. Single digit.

It's literally just not worth it. Time is the most finite resource that we all have.

[fn-mote]

These companies are scum. I don't want to be part of this march to the bottom of caring for your customer. Big companies are also different because of the firmness with which they are locked in to the purchasing infrastructure (among other reasons).

[nradov]

Sure, all major US cellular carriers are scum and abuse customers in similar ways. So you'll be part of the march to the bottom whether you want it or not.

It is possible to switch to a smaller VNO with better customer policies. But then your cellular data gets dropped during heavy network congestion, which is probably worse for most of us.