I am probably a slow learner in this regard, but I recently found out that it is pretty easy to save money on quite a few websites on the Internet.  If you are doing online shopping, generally just searching on the company whose site you are using together with the word “discount code” will bring up quite a few websites fairly quickly that offer you discounts of at least 10%, but quite often 20% to 25%.  In fact, I have not come across a website for which a discount is not available yet and it just makes me wonder why I never did that before!  

I guess it is similar to the principle if you don’t ask you don’t get, but this is a lot easier than asking and it is a similar principle that I always tell my staff – and that is not to simply tell me what something costs, but to phone another company and get a competing quote.  There are so many businesses, especially those who you have been working with for 1 or 2 years that are slowly starting to put up their prices and don’t react in any way until such time as you tell them about a quote from a competing company at a much lower price than what they are charging you.  I don’t think attorneys compete as much on price.  In the personal injury field they all pretty much charge the same amount, although of course there have been people who have been involved in charging abusive amounts, some of whom have left South Africa and others who are subjected to litigation with regard to their fees.  I personally think the attorneys by and large compete on results and service and in that regard I have been shocked by some of the big cases I have seen, under-settled by other attorneys against the Road Accident Fund, not to mention cases where the attorneys seem to never update the clients, not more than once a year anyway.