Le Chic Geek
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This company really believes in show-don’t-tell. Â Fancy Hands, a company I’ve sung the praises of, is continuing its offer to negotiate a lower rate with your cable bill–for free.
I tried it and I wasn’t able to get a discount (because I just started a new cable plan and I’m at a really low rate), but they did negotiate a year of HBO for free.
I use Fancy Hands pretty often–especially when I don’t want to wait on hold. Â If you prefer to speak to agents yourself, you can have them patch you in once they reach an agent.
You can see how long they waited on the phone in a task record. Â They waited for an hour and a half on hold with Priceline for me today.
Find out more about what Fancy Hands can do here.
I’d also like to give away three of my Fancy Hands tasks–that is, three people can use Fancy Hands to do a task they don’t want to do themselves. Â This is not sponsored by Fancy Hands and would be coming out of my own account.
You could make Fancy Hands wait on hold, cancel a newspaper subscription, price out flights, and more. Â If you do win a task and don’t get the response you want from them, you can always push back with feedback about how it went. Â I’ve never had them not re-do a task for me that I wasn’t happy with.
But how do you win?
To win a free task from Fancy Hands, leave a comment telling me your most frustrating experience. Â The kind of experience you wished you had someone to help you with.
I’ll choose three winners from the comments. Â Contest closes at 12 noon Saturday, Eastern time.
Comcast randomly sent me a new modem and upgraded my plan to add a phone line which I never asked for. Not only did they charge me more but told me I was responsible for returning the device as they no longer do house pick ups. I checked the website and drove 45 minutes to a return location which ended up being closed despite its hours being spelled out as open during those times. The next day I called Comcast to go to another location 30 minutes away. The agent assured me this office was open all day. I arrived to find out this store has always been closed on Sundays despite Comcast website and agent assuring me it was open.
I would LOVE to try this service. When I read “you can use them to cancel a newspaper”, I thought, “yes, please!”
Dealing with T-Mobile can be such a hassle for us sometimes. We have a huge account with all the phone lines of the whole expanded family in the states, plus another account for 3 business lines. There are issues and mistakes almost every other month and sometimes it’s even a mistake they made with their attempt to fix a different mistake. It’s impossible to get on the phone and explain our issues only once – we always get transferred to someone else numerous times and have to go over the spiel again and again, even after a long wait. Not to mention those representatives that barely know any English.
OK, here’s an example of a task I would have liked this service to handle. A hotel I am interested in advertises a rate on its website that is “only available to Choice Privileges” members…which I am and have been for 10+ years. So I call the hotel directly to book the room only to be told they can’t do so and that I must call Choice Privileges reservations which I do. They quote me a different (read, “higher”) price and when I push back telling them I’m on the hotel’s website, they tell me, “We can’t offer you that rate; it can only be booked online.” Finally, I figure out how to do so (the website isn’t especially intuitive).
CableNinja offers to cut your cable bill by up to 30%. For Time-Warner users, CN wants to know your “Custom Code.” TWC seems to have neither a Custom Code nor a Customer Code, so I don’t really know what that means. Perhaps it means Password, but I hesitate to enter that into a non-https non-dotted text field.
Hope this helps!
“Your customer code can be found on your bill. If you do not have access to this information or you need your customer code immediately, please call us from your TWC Home Phone for security purposes, and a customer service representative can assist the account holder in obtaining the code. If you don’t call from your Home Phone, your only option of having your customer code sent is via U.S. postal mail.”
Thank you Jeanne! I found the Customer Code in the upper-left corner of the paper bill.
medical billing/insurance errors are the worst but can FancyHands really help with this?
that’s awesome about free cable discount help. I could really use that!
I’ve had them help me with those before but it’s about 50/50 on whether the agent will talk to FancyHands instead of me. At the very least, they can call and patch you in to verify, but that ends up making it more complicated.
I would love help with getting a restaurant reservation for some fancy restaurant in Paris that you need to call 1 month out (due to the time difference I can’t quite make the call). Or help getting Jimmy Fallon tickets by monitoring the twitter feed on a certain day!
I’ve been with Comcast for over 25+ years. If you don’t call them every year or two you end up paying too much for services that are being offered for less and less as time goes by. We moved 2 years ago and I wanted to keep the same internet plan with 5 extra IP addresses billed at $9.95/mo extra.
Problem #1: I never did get the extra IP addresses but the bill always has the extra $9.95 charge added. I had to call and wait on hold, get cut off, call back countless times over a period of 6-8 months and then they would only credit up to 3 months back so I was billed $9.95/mo for nothing for 5 months.
Problem #2: After about 1 year, we returned the TV Cable boxes because nobody watched TV in the other 2 rooms so I didn’t want to pay an extra $19.90/mo for nothing. I verified they received the equipment a couple of days later and thought they removed the extra charges but they never did and I didn’t notice that until recently. That’s an entire year of being billed $19.90/mo for nothing. I dread calling them again only to be told they will only credit 3 months back so I will be calling your service to see what they can do.
The 2 year promotional package is up and I need to have the $219.00 they are charging for cable, internet and phone re-negotiated too. I also need to have my Kaiser bill re-negotiated – it’s cancelled but they are still trying to collect over $2,000 even though I never even went to the doctor. Hopefully someone can help with that too.
Thanks for offering so many great tips and services. I will be spreading the word to everyone I know – this is one of the best sites I’ve found in a long time. Keep up the good work!