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January 05, 2007
Its About Time, And Money
I found this on the web when doing some research on horror stories from Nextel subscribers. This article addresses a couple of issues I had often contemplated.
Verizon Wireless To Terminate Worst Aspect Of Early Termination Fees
From the about-time dept
Mobile operators subsidize the price of mobile phones, so it's no wonder they want to make sure their customers stick around for a while to make up the lost money (and some profit) on subscription fees. However, over time they've extended the length of the contracts from one year to two, and increased the "early termination fees" to ridiculous levels. Those ETFs can be hundreds of dollars and they're impossible to get out of. Even dying won't get you out of the fees sometimes. While it may keep subscribers through the end of their two year contract, it also pisses off enough people that it simply delays the time frame until they switch to a competitor. It appears that Verizon Wireless has finally realized that people aren't thrilled about this. They're still keeping the early termination fee, but prorating it, so that the closer you are to the end of your contract, the cheaper it is to leave. That seems a lot more fair. The company also has decided that existing customers can get the same deals on new phones that new customers can -- which is something that never made sense. Churn is incredibly costly for the mobile operators. Keeping existing customers happy should be a priority -- yet, plans that gave better deals to new customers than existing ones simply served to piss off long standing customers (not that they could leave due to the high ETFs, of course). So, perhaps, lowering the ETF penalty, while also giving customers more reasons to stay, it will help reduce churn even more
Posted by MyChron Mike at January 5, 2007 10:16 AM
Comments
Mike,
I agree that cell providers are most focused on new accounts and once you sign on your customer service is over, I have many friends I met racing over the past 6 years and they like the nextell two way feature that they want me to join. I refuse to deal with nextell because my friends always complain about them yet still use their service I dont understand why.
Mike thanks for all the great service you provide all forms of racing with Aim, we all appreciate it. Sorry about your recent loss its taks along time to heal, I lost my brother when I was 17, 27 years ago doesnt seem that long when i remenber the good times.
Peace
Mark
Posted by: Mark Turk at January 7, 2007 01:29 PM