ISP fees

Insight cable now offers broadband for 30 dollars/month in my community. I have SBC Yahoo DSL and in light of the Insight deal I called SBC today and negotiated a decrease in my fees from 28 to 20 dollars. Now I have to decide if I should switch and deal with the hassle of changing my e-mail address for fast service. In any event, I thought I’d pass on my experience for those who might wish to negotiate a better ISP rate.

 

Not all broadband is created equal. DSL and cable are completely different animals.

The cable service's $30 price tag tells us nothing about its quality; or about how it compares, objectively, with the DSL service you already have.

SBC routinely renegotiates its fees for periods of time to keep customers. There is nothing out-of-the-ordinary, here. And the $20/month is consistent with $19.95/mo promos SBC does all the time. People who sign-up for $29.95/mo SBC DSL are routinely allowed to have that price extended every year when, per the contract, it should raise (at the beginning of the second year) to $49.95/mo. So, in effect, $29.95/mo is the pricepoint at which SBC is willing to operate without breaking a sweat; and $19.95/mo is a sale price with which it's willing to live for protracted periods. You haven't hurt them a bit.

Define "fast service." What makes you think that the particular cable modem service you're considering would be faster than your existing DSL? Do you even sufficiently understand the technological differences between the two services, generally -- much less their peculiarities in your particular neighborhood -- to make an educated comparison? Or is the bottom line monthly fee all that you really care about, provable quality of service or overall respective features be damned?

Moreover, when SBC renegotiated your price, it did so as a means of keeping you as a customer. You made it a condition of your staying, in fact. So SBC did what you asked, in good faith. Turning around, once that consideration has been conveyed, is what the law calls "acting in bad faith." Being a person who does things in bad faith is, in the eyes of the law, comparable to being a pedophile in the eyes of general society. It's, legally speaking, about as low as one can go. It's even worse than someone who breaches an agreement so long as said breach was not said someone's intention all along. Being a person of bad faith means that even your negotiations cannot be trusted, much less your subsequent performance. It is a state of moral and ethical bankruptcy.

I realize that, as a matter of law, if SBC was not smart enough to get another year or two's contractual commitment from you in exchange for the new and lower $20 price point; and if your original commitment period has now expired, then you're certainly free to do whatever you want without your having breached any contractual provisions or being in a state of statutory lawlessness. But none of that speaks to the fundamental lack of ethics that your doing so would exhibit. If you can live with that, fine; but integrity is doing the right thing even when no one's looking.

[sarcasm]
Because, after all, those nasty ISPs are such low-lifes and ripoff artists, generally, that we all need to stick together in our efforts to stick it to 'em every chance we get... right?
[/sarcasm]

A society that bases its consumption purely on the price point of that which is consumed ends-up getting precisely the quality of product -- and of manufacturer support thereof -- that it deserves.

 

I have SBC Yahoo DSL as well. The service has been OK, speed, reliability, etc. I had some difficulty with not receiving all my email and never really figured out the problem. I got tired of hassling with it and simply started using a free email service. I don't have hundreds of email contacts and so switching email addresses doesn't seem like a big deal to me.

Gregg - Interesting discussion of "bad faith." Very existential.
Jack

 

Help me understand something, Gregg. How in the world did a post intended to share information with this community regarding a service we all use elicit such a remarkable response?

 

Re: Re: ISP fees

It was very interesting. It explains alot to me because I suspected a lawyer of negotiating in bad faith and tried to ignore it for awhile. When I finally called him on it, things seemed to improve slightly. Now I might have a better understanding as to why. Perhaps I should have complained to the law board? (or whatever it is called?)

 

Good deal. I pay around $50, but I have cable Broadband which will always be faster than DSL (is anyone wants a crash course on why DSL is just a passing fad, let me know).

Personally, I avoid anything to do with SBC. It is a terribly run company whose CSR's appear to be from hell. (or at least act that way)

 

ok, I'll bite, why is DSL a passing fad?

 

I guess being in SBC's shoes, when dealing with folks (who think) like you appear to be thinking, far too many times over the last three decades. Sorry that I let it push my buttons.

 

Apology accepted. I am going to make a request of you, Gregg. Which is this: I’m asking you to summon the courage to dig deep into your heart and with candor and empathy look at this situation through my eyes. I’m asking you to identify and explain the feelings you would imagine yourself having were you to find yourself vilified the way you did me. Imagine how you would feel if in response to an innocuous posting you discovered the following unflattering characteristics if not directly attributed to then associated with your character: bad faith, as low as you can go, one who cannot be trusted, morally and ethically bankrupt, fundamentally lacking ethics, lacking integrity, statutorily lawless, and the most offensive, pedophilia. That’s quite a laundry list for a response to a three line post. Gregg, I agree with you when you say integrity is doing the right thing.

 

Ohgod.

Look, don't make me feel like taking-back the apology, okay? I wrote what I wrote because what I really wanted to write was too time-consuming and wearing on my psyche at the time... so I did the equivalent of throwing my arms in the air and walking away dismissively, leaving you and your conscience to do what you will. But make no mistake about it: I stand by every word of what I wrote... every single word. Having been in SBC's shoes in situations like this, I found your cavalier interest in, and the ease with which you were contemplating, dishonoring the spirit of the negotiation you completed with SBC -- especially if price were really your only criteria -- repugnant... er... well... at least the attitute behind that sort of thinking, anyway. Included somewhere in there was the pity I felt toward you for making the assumption that you were making an apples-to-apples assessment in the first place; that the $30/mo cable modem connection was necessarily better than your existing DSL connection, even if SBC were charging you $60/mo for it; and, worse, apparently not caring enough to find out (and, of course, how misleading that could be to the reader here). The whole thing then snowballed into the feelings I had which lead me to make my original post in this thread in the first place...

...not one single word of which, by the way -- even in light of the apology -- I take back. Not one.

I just didn't want to argue with you about it anymore. Still don't. Plus, in fairness to you, I can think of ways that that phone call between you and SBC could have gone which, depending on how you left it, would actually not have amounted to bad faith...

...but I just didn't want to take the time to crawl down that hypothetical flow chart and explore all the possibilities. Still don't.

That said, if you'd really like to rekindle all that in me and go down that road of debate, fine; but I'm guessing you'll emerge on the other side looking worse than I will.

I really think that our time -- both mine and yours -- can be better spent... don't you?

So let's just move on, shall we? Or do you want to really do this?

 

Good thing you didn't go over the top with your response.






Tom Nixon

 

With all due respect, the proper context was repeated multiple times, "in the eyes of the law".

 

Introspection, reflection and taking another's perspective don't seem to be cornerstones of your behavioral repertoire, Gregg. It looks like your interpersonal style runs more toward confrontation and having to be right. I think I have a pretty good understanding of what you're all about. And so, I suspect, does everyone who reads thread. Tom makes a good point; it really is good you didn't go over the top.

 

I guess I truly do not understand Gregg's point. Many areas of marketing have evolved into dual tier pricing. People who don't want to be bothered and don''t care about price pay one price, while others who are willing to watch prices and negotiate pay another. Am I taking advantage of the grocery store when I go in and buy loss leaders only? What about when I buy a computer printer with ink for $20 and replace it with another new one when ink runs out instead of paying $40 for ink cartridges? What if I take the time to find a car dealer's real price on a car and pay thousands less than the next customer?

 

Point taken. And I do understand you make it with respect. There are many ways of delivering a message. In this case Gregg might have chosen to say something like, “Dave have you considered that there may be an ethical dilemma in the way you're approaching this situation?” Much like the respectful way you approach me. Bill, I think we have a community here and the best way to promote and maintain it is through civil treatment of one another. I take your point about in the eyes of the law but there is also the eyes of the beholder. Personally, I find this to be an awkward and offensive situation. From the perspective of our community, I don't want Degreeinfo to revert back to the way things were a few months ago where the moderators found it necessary to generate a thread on etiquette.

 

I have never seen such a short, simple post generate a response message that contains within its body: a non sequitur, an argumentum ad hominem, an argumentum ad verecundiam (anonymous authority as in "in the eyes of the law" at that!), a false analogy, a fallacy of exclusion, an untesibility (well, I suppose survey of "the eyes of the law" could be done), and what the heck, an implied libel per se (not technically a logical fallacy, but what the heck, it's Latin, could just as well be a logical fallacy).

[awe]
Congratulations, Gregg. You've managed it. Name it and frame it, man; your response is a classic, once in a lifetime kind of thing.
[/awe]

 

Well, my good man, economic theory holds that the worth of any product/service is what any willing buyer would pay and any willing seller would accept. As far as classical political economy is concerned, it may be true that the seller may have wished to get the buyer to come up a bit more on price and the buyer may have wished to get the seller to come down a bit more on price, but the fact that the two nominally consented to the price proves that it was worth it to both.

In other words, my good man, if you do all of the above, you are not "screwing" the seller; you are just a savvy shopper. At any rate, the sellers did offer their consent, even if you were "screwing" them.

 

This thread has gotten off track; and the original point, and all that may (and should) logically derive therefrom, has been lost... as usual.

It is fundamentally bad faith for:

1. vendor A's customer to telephone vendor A and therein present to vendor A the competitive product and price of vendor B, accompanied by an expressed or implied threat to leave vendor A and become vendor B's customer if vendor A does not meet or beat vendor B's price; and then,
   
2. said customer to allow vendor A to, in fact, lower its price for the express purpose of retaining said customer's business, as vendor A was invited by said customer to do, and as said customer made it clear by implication or other more direct means was the sole condition under which he would be willing to continue to be vendor A's customer; and then,
   
3. said customer to accept vendor A's having done so, and by said acceptance to allow vendor A to believe that it had met the customer's conditions and had, therefore, successfully retained his business and that there were no further issues which could threaten that; and then,
   
4. said customer to hang-up the phone and thereupon more or less immediately contemplate becoming vendor B's customer anyway based solely on price, making it a theoretical breach -- and almost certainly with malice aforethought -- of the very agreement he had, only moments before, struck with vendor A whose actions during the negotiation of which were in good faith.

People who think and/or behave like that in business and/or life are reprehensible; and my opining so here is not a "libel per se" of either the implied or expressed variety... or of any variety, for that matter.

That said, if vendor A did not adequately protect its interests along the way by securing a further commitment from the customer in exchange for the reduced price -- as well as establishing an understanding, therein, as to what would, absent a further and superceding agreement at that time, happen to said price at the conclusion of the agreement term -- then, in the eyes of the law, the customer is free to do whatever he wants. But that doesn't make either his going ahead and becoming vendor B's customer, nor his mere contemplation thereof so soon after his having struck the agreement that presumptive bad faith is inescapable, any less reprehensible.

That was, and continues to be, my point... notwithstanding my apparently assailable form of expressing same. It was my only point. It was a valid -- and, I dare say, a sound -- point. And I will apologize neither for making it, nor for doing so with passionate and unambiguous disdain for both act the actor. It's textbook ethics. I am right. And nothing that anyone has since posted in this thread -- no matter in what language it was written (in a pathetic attempt, no doubt, to impress) -- has made me feel one single moment of regret, remorse, or even a momentary and misguided second thought or temptation to retract. Moreover, unless the counter arguments, just generally, get a helluva' lot better than they've been here so far, it's unlikely that I'll change my position or mitigate the continued and growing disdain with which I far-from-humbly express and maintain it...

...which was, at least in part, why I suggested that we all probably had better things to do and should probably just move on. But I guess that makes too much sense.

 

David contacted his current ISP provider (SBC) and told then that he was considering switching to a competitor due to price. SBC made him an offer in hopes of keeping his business.

I don't understand what consideration has been conveyed. What he received was an offer. I also don't understand why David's rejection of SBC's offer would be a breach of either law or ethics.

Even if David accepts SBC's offer and exchanges cash for service this month, if he hasn't signed a long-term contract then I don't understand why that acceptance should compel him to continue purchasing the SBC service, month after month indefinitely into the future.

Does rejecting a business offer really justify a rant?

I don't see anything unethical about what David proposes to do. It's good sense, actually.

He solicited an offer. He would be in his rights to solicit offers from any number of competitors as well. Then he is free to go with the one that offers him the best deal. I don't see any obligation to accept whatever is offered just because the offer was solicited. That's foolishness.

 

You've just identified the situation. The initial one year obligation was long since met and the $28 service was being provided on a month to month basis. The current $20 service is also provided on a month to month basis. No additional obligation was required.