When your service provider acts in a nervous fashion, sending you dozens of mailings pleading with you to buy more or tell your friends to buy more, then you know something is amiss with their finances. The last refuge of a CEO is to make a ton of mass-mailings, cross his fingers and pray that the suckers bite.
I subscribed at one time to Vonage, an excellent VOIP (Voice Over Internet Provider), through which unlimited long distance calls are made in exchange for a low monthly fee. Back in 2007, they began flooding me with offers through the mail. Ugly shiny decals to put on my car, and ugly cards to hand out to all of my friends. If I recruited a new customer, I would receive something like two months free. Well, I tried, I really did, but most people just don't make that many long distance calls to begin with, and those who do feel like they can just use their cell phone.
Upon receiving my fifth mailing containing marketing spam from Vonage, I became suspicious. It's that horse sense of mine. Something was just not right. I did a search on Google news and there was my answer. Vonage was in big trouble! In fact, many financial analysts predicted that it would fold in the first half of 2008! That did not turn out to be the case, as far as I know. At any rate, I called up Vonage to cancel my service, because it turns out I didn't make many long distance calls myself. The Customer Service Representative was such a nice lady with a pleasant sounding voice that I changed my mind. She had quite a way with words. I remember her saying, "If you keep the service, we will cut your bill in half!" Swayed by her feminine charms, I stayed with Vonage another six months.
The moral of this story is, negotiation sometimes works even with corporations, particularly when they are bleeding customers. They will do anything to stop the bleeding, including chopping your bill with a cleaver. Vonage may still be a good service today. I did not follow what happened to them after I quit subscribing. I think they are still around, because I got an email from them a month ago. Maybe they found a sugar daddy to help them through the difficult times. Most of their troubles stemmed from a lawsuit inflicted upon them by a larger corporation that seemed intent upon destroying them altogether. Vonage was actually a cute and feisty little dog of a company, and I wish them all the best.
Years ago, I used Charter Communications, a cable provider, as my Internet Service Provider. I wasn't terribly happy with them. The #1 problem was reliability. The Internet would go down and stay down for anywhere from ten minutes to TEN DAYS. No explanation would be given, and no refund credited to my account. Is that fair? Of course not. Sometimes, I called their technical department on the phone, but no one knew anything. Other times, I got in my car and drove to the local office for Charter and asked, "Why is my Internet down?" Their local office tells more about Charter than anything else. The employees are all behind bullet-proof windows. They pointed to a red telephone located in the lobby and told me the telephone would answer all of my questions. I picked it up, and a voice on the other end said, "Sorry Sir, we are working on the problem right now." This is about the time I decided to cancel Charter.
Charter then began sending me offers, at the rate of one per week, to come back to their ever-loving arms and embrace mediocrity once again. They were willing, not to reduce my bill, but to increase the services and give me a sweet package deal. They offered internet, VOIP, and basic cable television for $69. Sounds pretty good, doesn't it? If I hadn't experienced numerous occasions without any Internet, I would think so, too.
Charter liked to brag about how fast cable was compared to DSL. This misses the point entirely. As with electricity, the main issue with any ISP is reliability. The Internet must be up 99.99% of the time. As for speed, DSL technology has progressed until the speed gap is not what it once was. As for the package deals offered by a cable provider, who cares about television? Passive entertainment is the way of the past. Interactive entertainment--the Internet--is the way of the future. I would rather save $1 than pay anything additional for television. At any rate, the cable provider makes money off the content providers. Why do they need to also hit the customer up for fees? They're lucky anyone subscribes to them anymore. Most of the channels on cable TV are loaded with irritating commercials, and the content itself is abysmal just as it always has been. Cable providers brag about having a hundred channels, but how many of those channels are worth anything?
What ever happened to Charter? Bankruptcy! Am I surprised? Not in the slightest. Their Internet service was lousy, and for me, that is enough reason.
When you start receiving desperate offers in the mail, that's a strong signal that something is amiss. Do a search on Google and find out whether the company is suffering financial difficulties. You should not sign up for services with a company that is about to get flushed down the toilet. It's actually quite irresponsible and selfish for such a company to entice unsuspecting people to sign up with them. They're trying to recruit suckers to take down with the sinking ship.
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