71–80 of 97 posts
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Ethics is the point, not ROI.
And this is the lesson that Capitalism teaches: if you do not like the ethics of another company, you are free to create a competing business model and hurt their ROI (if their current customers agree with you).
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It's for a few reasons. One is, as you mention, because it's nothing more than a button click to downgrade. Less than a 1 minute call with a CSR. How they can justify $50 for that is anyone's guess. The second is they're saying things like "it's to cover the cost of having CSRs, printing bills, etc." But actually, the $110/mo charge covers that, and always has. Third is because the company is making plenty of profit,…
"How they can justify $50 for that" They don't need to justify. The only reason they would even think about this is if the detriment didn't outweigh the benefit. If perhaps x% of people think that it's a ripoff and 90% don't or don't even know or think everything is a ripoff anyway then why not get the extra revenue? My guess is that the amount of people that even have any understanding of what is involved is quite s…
The telecommunications industry in the U.S. is anything but capitalist. Furthermore, people don't really have a choice regarding their internet service, so ripping them off for another $50 is pretty low.
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Go back and watch a VHS tape recording of an over-the-air broadcast TV show. You will be amazed at how colossally crappy the quality of it is because you're now used to various levels of high-def TV. The quality we get used to is only going to go up from here. Beyond that, look at Netflix's recommendations today: https://support.netflix.com/en/node/306 To get 1080p streaming, you need 7 Mbps. To get 3D you need 12 Mb…
Go back and watch a VHS tape recording of an over-the-air broadcast TV show. You will be amazed at how colossally crappy the quality of it is because you're now used to various levels of high-def TV. The quality we get used to is only going to go up from here. I agree with your conclusion, but not necessarily your reasoning. By contrast, when I watch an actual DVD, it makes me wonder why we put up with the awful comp…
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Don't you find that it should be at least somewhat commensurate with the work required though? $250 to set the value for speed rating from 50 to 105Mbps on the backend service menu and then reboot the router; doesn't that seem a little bit like they might be playing on peoples lac of knowledge of the systems involved?
"Don't you find that it should be at least somewhat commensurate with the work required though?" Business doesn't work that way. You make hay when the sun shines. And there are cases when you can't charge. Because of things your competitors are doing. In a restaurant they don't charge you for napkins and water although they could. (Actually they do charge for premium water but that's a fairly recent invention). The i…
Shrink-wrapped software, for instance, has no value proposition from the original proprietor. Photoshop? Why should I trade with Adobe for a few hundred dollars when I can get the same from another user for no charge from him?
Someone like you opened my eyes to the false dichotomy. Businesses and consumers are not different. Each wants something that the other has. They want my money. I want their product. If they can get more money without changing the product, they will. If I can get more product without changing the money spent, I will.
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...and this is why the last mile needs to become a regulated utility. Whose place is it to say Comcast is making too much profit? Mine, as their former customer.
That's a rather large non sequitur you're wielding there. You had your say when you cancelled on them.
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No, I don't. I am not a fan of Comcast for many reasons. This fee isn't very consumer-friendly and it should be described more honestly as an "upgrade fee" or similar. But no, there's no reason it has to have anything to do with the "work" required to do the upgrade. Is Adobe obligated to make the price of Photoshop commensurate to the cost of burning a DVD or downloading a file?
"Is Adobe obligated to make the price of Photoshop commensurate to the cost of burning a DVD or downloading a file?" Of course people who have never run a business and don't understand the total cost of running a business will always relate "cost" to one thing what you pay for a particular item which when factoring a host of other things is either not relevant or not easily determined. I just read where Tesla (an HN…
To be fair, how you run your business depends greatly on this. Other companies would distribute the profit from this tax credit to shareholders or executives; Tesla is using it to continue with R&D and to fund expansion.
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I thought that can be done remotely? On one of my old ISPs I could change every setting on the modem on the company's website. It was quite scary, actually, how little privacy I had in this regard. They could easily check the signal strength to the modem that way...
It absolutely can be done remotely. Every one of these modems does SNMP, exports everything it has in the way of statistics, and they can read it remotely The modems are nowadays configured to only allow requests from certain ip space with certain passwords because you could actually accomplish a lot in the docsis 1.0 days by messing around with SNMP.
Disclaimer: The FBI was cracking down on people who were doing this.
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Are you trolling? In an industry that is not regulated as a utility due to monopoly issues, profit margins are irrelevant. But in an industry that activity stiffles local competition with monopoly powers, this is all the info I need: http://finance.yahoo.com/q/ks?s=CMCSA+Key+Statistics The serious answer to your question is that the price a consumer pays should reflect the value of the service they are receiving and…
> should be proportional to the cost of providing this product/service. I'm sorry, but I can't agree with that as a general principle. In this specific instance, with Comcast et al who benefit from monopolies, sure. But as a general principle, the 'value' of a product or service is whatever people are willing to pay for it. If I buy widgets in Asia for $1 each, and Americans are willing to buy them for $1,000,000 eac…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Ethics is the point, not ROI.
And this is the lesson that Capitalism teaches: if you do not like the ethics of another company, you are free to create a competing business model and hurt their ROI (if their current customers agree with you).