Mr Wonderful Kevin O’Leary Says You’re Literally Giving Away Money To Billers By Not Doing This One Simple Thing — And He’s Been Doing It For Decades – Alphabet (NASDAQ:GOOG), Amazon.com (NASDAQ:AMZN)
Earlier this week, the “Shark Tank” investor and entrepreneur, Kevin O’Leary, fondly known as “Mr Wonderful,” shared a no-nonsense tactic he swears by to avoid overpaying for services like cable, subscriptions and phone plans.
What Happened: “Every time a bill goes up, I call,” O’Leary said in a post on social media. “Not customer service—retention. That’s where the real deals are. I negotiate like it’s sport. I’ve been doing it for decades, and I never pay retail.”
In the video he shared along with the post, O’Leary noted that retention reps have the power to offer you special, lower-cost plans or promotional discounts to keep you from cancelling. Regular customer-service agents usually can’t.
See Also: Mark Cuban Breaks Down The No. 1 Red Flag That Makes Him Want To Look For A Way Out On Shark Tank — Reveals Dumbest Pitches He’s Seen, From Tail Lightz To Original Man Candle
“Subscription fees, cable bills, you name it—I fight them all. Keeps me sharp. If you’re not negotiating your bills, you’re just giving money away. And I don’t do charity for telecoms,” he stated.
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Earlier this year, in January, streaming giant Netflix Inc. NFLX raised the price of its standard streaming plan by 16%. In 2022, Amazon.com, Inc. AMZN made a similar move and increased the price for Prime customers by 16%.
In July 2023, YouTube Premium, a subsidiary of Alphabet Inc.’s GOOG GOOGL Google, raised its monthly price from $11.99 to $13.99 and its annual plan from $119.99 to $139.99—marking its first price increase since launching in 2018.
Similarly, according to a 2022 report by CordCutting.com, the average cost of a cable bill surged from $96 to $147 per month between 2019 and 2022—an increase of 52%. This jump comes even as the number of channels included in standard packages declined, driving the cost per channel from $0.50 to $0.77.
Why It’s Important: Accordingly to celebrity net worth, Mr Wonderful currently has a net worth of around $400 million.
Born in Montreal in 1954 to Lebanese and Irish parents, O’Leary’s early life was shaped by international travel due to his stepfather’s work with the United Nations.
Though he once dreamed of becoming a photographer, O’Leary pursued business on his stepfather’s advice—earning a degree from the University of Waterloo in 1977 and a Master of Business Administration from Western’s Ivey Business School in 1980.
While at Nabisco, he honed marketing skills he later used to co-found SoftKey, an educational software company that bought The Learning Company and was sold to Mattel for $4.2 billion in 1999.
Since then, O’Leary has co-founded storage firms, launched his own wine label and invested in numerous companies through “Shark Tank.”
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Disclaimer: This content was partially produced with the help of Benzinga Neuro and was reviewed and published by Benzinga editors.
