Legend wrote:I must say, I'm having trouble with this. I've had several of my customers contacting me asking what the email really means. One was concerned because they "may" be moving through no fault of their own and were concerned about the ramifications of being on a new contract if they have to move in the contract period. All have asked why they have to pay a plan change fee of $40 when a plan change is effectively being forced on them by Exetel (pay an extra $10 or change your plan!) and most asked why they should have to go onto a new contract.
I've reassured the customer who may be moving, based on an earlier post in this thread, that moving won't be an issue. The plan change fee is an issue though. It used to be that a plan change fee where the speed wasn't changing attracted no fee at all. A $40 increase seems a bit rich. After all, the $10 increase is being imposed as incentive to change to a new plan because Exetel doesn't want people to be on the old plans. $40 is dis-incentive to change. Sure, you can avoid that by going to a new contract but I have to ask, WHY should you need to?
In my case, I've been a customer since May 2005. It's not likely that I'm going anywhere so why should I have to go on a contract to demonstrate my loyalty? I'm pretty sure that I've demonstrated it by staying with Exetel for 69 months, 30 more than I spent with BigPond. When Foxtel tried to force me onto a contract in their change from Foxtel Digital satellite to "Foxtel Digital" I cancelled my service. With Exetel I don't need to go that far right now, as Exetel has made the decision for me. I'm on a 36GB/unlimited plan with a 12-hour off-peak. Going to a new plan with only 10 hours OP means I'll need more peak GB and that means going to a 60GB plan (it's either 30 or 60 - no in-between) that costs $10 more so either way I'm going to be hit. I may as well just stay with the old plan and suffer the $10 extra. Still, it's hard to convince my customers to stay when other ISPs (one in particular) have been peppering the area with brochures just as Exetel announces its price increase.
I have said this many, many times before and I'll say it one last time.
CARRIERS have a view that
ONLY if a new contract is entered in to will they provide 'added bonuses'. They also have other, currently impossible, views that I won't confuse this explanation with.
So....to be able to offer the benefits of the carrier bonuses....a new contract is required.
Over the years we have been providing services we have endlessly tried to balance the bonuses that come to us with the sign up of NEW customers with juggling the net gain of those, by definition much fewer new customers among both the new customers AND the current customers.
As our current user base continues to grow it becomes an impossible task.
So we have now come to a point where it just can't be done.
The other point is that we have never tried to do anything more than break even on the supply of any of our services (read the stated aims of Exetel on our web site) and right now, and for most of the past 18 months, we have lost money providing residential ADSL services. We don't expect any of our customers to give a damn about how we, at our sole discretion, decide to price our services....it is our decision. Also we fully understand that some, perhaps all, of our customers will decide that their "loyalty" extends to using our services until they can get a similar/better service from some other supplier - totally OK with that view.. ..we are glad they have had the advantage of low prices while we could provide them and understand that lower prices from someone else may well suit them better now we can no longer provide prices at which we lose money.
So, peace, if it's in any customer's best interests to move to another provider we are happy for them to pursue their best interests.
We have done our best for seven years to provide very good low cost services. If some other provider can do that better than we can at this particular point in time then that's business.
Thanks. Yeah - 10 cents per phone call I get is not something I want to pay for so I suppose I would have to buy a new ATA to manage both PSTN and VoIP. Bugger. Thanks. If you are at all unsure whether it would incur the 10 cent charge I would like it confirmed.