I’ve written before that I see Big Wins as integral in all aspects of my life. Ok, maybe that’s an overstatement, but they really are important.

One area that I think a lot of us are finding Big Wins in, are retention offers on credit cards. But there are others! I mentioned in the past, that I call my cable provider roughly every 6 months to ensure that I have the latest promotion, which keeps my cable bill at a constant or slight increase, vs. the 10-25% increases that others might see after an initial sign up promotion.

Well, another area, that I don’t think has been talked about much, is cell phones. Especially lately, with the wireless carriers moving away from subsidizing cell phones, in exchange for signing a two year contract, it is harder and harder to get any sort of “retention bonus” out of them. But fear not, it is still possible.

Thanks to a Retention Specialist at Verizon Wireless, I was able to switch between the Verizon Plan (which I had only switched to a month ago), which has a $20 per line fee, back to a 2 year contract, which has a $40 per line fee, because the net result was getting two free phones.

You see, the way the new Verizon Plan works, is, they lower your per line fee, but then they charge you the full market cost of the phone you decide you want. In most cases, these are $600+ phones, and rather than paying all at once, Verizon is happy to break that out over 24 months, and just add it to your bill. So, imagine you want a $600 iPhone, you’d have to pay an additional $25 per month (plus the taxes). So, while, with the Verizon Plan, you’re saving $20 on per line fees, you’re actually paying $5 more per month for your phone. Over 24 months, you are paying a net $120 more! Now, there are some promotions that come and go, like the current one, which offers $300 for trading in an old phone, when you buy a Droid Turbo 2 by Motorola.

With the old 2 year contract approach, which folks who have had Verizon Wireless before the switch over, seem to be able to be grandfathered back into, you get up to a $200 credit for a new phone when signing up for a new contract. Sometimes you can get even more by asking nicely for something to “sweeten the pot.” In my case, I was ok with the $200 credit, since the phones I wanted were less than that (the Galaxy S5, which if you did the Verizon Plan, wouldn’t be less than $200, see below):

I also asked for the “upgrade charges” of $40 per line to be waived. The retention specialist could only waive one, but at this point I was kind’ve worn down, so I accepted it. Overall, I’m still saving money.