Another Price Increase - AFTER the Whirlpool voting finished

[drupe]

Klaas wrote:
I don't understand why people believe that a business needs to justify their pricing strategy or the changes they make to it

Agreed. Of course if they don't or their explanation doesn't make sense then people are allowed to speculate or complain aren't they? Surely transparency is a good thing?

I don't think that ISP's are in any special category in regards to how people examine their prices. I have taken my mobile phone company (Three) to task over their "invitation" to pay an extra $2 per month to receive paper bills (I need them printed out for tax purposes). If they had have offered a discount for paperless bills it might have been a different matter. As a long term customer they agreed to waive this charge, for all future contracts as well. Now that's what I call customer service.

CoreyPlover wrote:
viewtopic.php?p=267587#p267587 is probably the most direct response to the $90 plan change fee that you will get from senior Exetel management

Thanks for that Corey, it's an easier read than the musing. It's clear that the fee is to discourage people moving plans because of work required to process these.

There are a lot of comments on that forum, I can see there are a lot more people more annoyed, and losing more, than me. I never used the free services that came bundled with the service, and I'm past my minimum term.

I just don't understand why, "as a long term Exetel customer" (only 18 months, but I'm quoting the email I got), on a legacy plan that Exetel is losing money on, Exetel would want to discourage me from moving to one of their new streamlined plans (as the change fee went from $0 to $10). I would prefer the "old" days of "'forcing' current customers to move from previous plans to new plans". Or just schedule my plan change request at a time of your convenience, I'm happy to be flexible.

It all seems a bit ad hoc and inconsistent to me. But maybe that is the price for cut price internet services.

Other than that I'm a very happy customer.

[flatulentmoose]

I won't claim to have extensive experience of Exetel customer service (though I have been with them over a year, I am what you would call a 'passive' customer), and I won't try to lambast or defend the $5 plan increase or $10 switching cost to other plans, but I do want to comment on the communication of this plan change and previous service changes and announcements.

It has been my experience that Exetel have consistently tried to explain their actions by reference to the telecom marketplace or their own profitability, and I have never had anything close to the amount of transparency in communications from banks, insurers and other ISPs etc...

I guess it is possible that Exetel is not losing money on these old plans and they just see an opportunity to gouge customers - I really don't know. All I'm saying is that I feel like I am being treated like a intelligent person when Exetel sends me emails, and I have certainly had a good 'customer service' experience because of it. If Exetel is losing money on these plans, they have used the perfect tone when communicating this to me - if they simply want more money, then at least they are using a very effective (in my case) marketing and sales technique. Either way, well done Exetel.

Discuss...

[drupe]

I agree with you flatulentmoose, I think Exetel has a lot more transparency than most businesses, take these forums for instance.

The constant communication from Exetel has largely given me confidence and trust, and I never thought that Exetel was not telling the truth when it said that it was losing money on old plans. However their reaction and solution to the problem, IMHO, was more than a bit erratic.

To be honest I never really read most of the detailed correspondence, and certainly never any of the blogs of management (I barely read any blogs). But I have now, and I must say there's a lot of detail there I'm not certain I really need to know.

Here's an interesting question: is it possible that too much transparency can distract a business from making sound business decisions?

[ForumAdmin]

Here's an interesting question: is it possible that too much transparency can distract a business from making sound business decisions?

It's hard to see how that could be the case.