How to destroy customer loyalty in one easy step
Many many years ago, I finally snapped and switched from a (very slow) dial-up network connection to a isdn (excuse me; "isdl") line from Northpoint, with the network connectivity provided by a local company which shall, at least for the present, remain unnamed. The service from Northpoint was about what you'd expect from a dotcom; they ate through their venture capitol, then just shut down one afternoon without warning. The unnamed local company, on the other hand, worked very hard to get around the dotcom collapse, and lined up alternative service (which, since it was also a dotcom, ate through its venture capitol, then shut down without warning) a couple of times before all the broadband providers within range died and I had to reluctantly revert to dialup until @Home finally wired my neighborhood and I could get broadband connectivity again.
After seven or eight years on cablemodem (@home, then attbi, and finally comcast; each vendor doing nothing to improve the service, but each of them raising the price by US$10.00/month), I got fed up with comcast after the volume of spam zombie traffic on the local network segment reached a point where I was seeing periodic multi-hour outages, at the same time that comcast "technical support" was saying "oh, there's something wrong with your computer, so you need to (reinstall windows|change your network cables|take your modem into our service center for replacement) and went out to see if the unnamed local company had gotten broadband access into my neighborhood again.
They had, and for US$40/month, so I decided it was time to replace the increasingly unreliable comcast service with a slower, but more technically adept, local service. And I did, and it worked, and the days of the comcast outages were gone, and I rejoiced.
For about two months, until I got my US Worst Qwest phone bill on saturday, which included a US$28 charge for "high speed internet." Hmm, that's funny, because I was getting my high speed internet™ from the unnamed local company. So, off went some mail to the support desk at the local company, saying "am I supposed to be getting phone bills for this service, because I didn't when I last used your services?"
Yesterday, I got a reply of, yes, the phone company charges for the line and the unnamed local company charges an additional US$18/month for network access. Oooo-kay, this didn't add up. US$28 + US$18 != US$40, unless you include a qwest for-one-year-only US$6.00 discount. So off went some more mail saying "um, there's something wrong with the billing here because it's not US$40/month."
This morning, I got back a reply that said, oh no, the billing numbers are correct, and the network connection will cost US$46/month with US$6/month off for the first year of service. And they invited me to look at the prices listed on their website.
Which, for the type of service I signed up for, was US$40/month. Not US$46/month, with a 1-year discount rate, but US$40/month for telco+network charges.
So that would make the advertised prices just what? I'm sure that the marketing people have lots of smooth sounding phrases to describe it, but I prefer a shorter description: the price was a lie.
US$46.00/month is not that much more expensive than the US$45.00 month that Qwest charges for their nasty MSN service (it is much more expensive than the US$32.00 that Qwest charges if you sign a 2 year contract, but that's a different story), so I would have not been too unhappy with it in the first place (sure, it's slower than the cablemodem, but the periodic network outages sort of take the thrill out of a 6mbit cable connection.) But being lied to about the prices? I expect that the phone company will lie to me; it's a big telco, so of course it will lie. But I chose a local company because I was under the illusion that they'd be, well, honest, instead of treating me like just another little money tree.
Imagine my joy to discover that I'm paying extra money for letting the unnamed local company piss all over my formerly high opinion of them. It certainly helps me renew my faith in American capitalism as a machine that creates souless monsters.