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Canada Post Kills Free Internet-For-Life Program
An Anonymous Coward writes: "About a year ago Canada Post was selling CD's for $10 in post offices promising free internet for life. The software was netzero style, with banner ads. Apperently all Canadians have died, they cancelled the free service and switched to a pay-per-month plan. Here's a Winnipeg Free Press article all about it."
I always wondered about those "Internet for life" companies:
Did they mean the life of the subscriber or company?
---Lane
---Lane
What's the point of moderating?!
2) They don't want to get sued so the probably want to keep up their part of that lifetime-deal
-> Better start looking over your shoulder. A lot! :-)
karma capped
False advertising? Yes.
Will it be judged as such in court? Nah. Lifetime services are expected by insurance companies, but that's about it. No court in the nation is going to force a company to give free internet for life. It's absurd. This isn't news.
Got Rhinos?
We've seen this before. Ad based internet hosting just doesn't work. Reccently several news agencies on the web have even posted that banner ads are not as high impact as people think they are. (well of course not, especially when pages have 4 or 5! at least they aren't pop-up ads!)
It's a nice idea, but unfortunately it doesn't work. If people really want 'free' internet for life, I reccomend that they look around for community freenets like Seattle Community Network, Arbornet, Tallahassee Freenet, Alachua County Freenet just to name a few. Go and support these by donating 20.00 a year or something like that and get free dial-up internet access. It's a great way for people to get on the internet, and compared to most local isp's or national isp's, it's only one or two months cost.
Don't turn your back on the community networks that are still in place that gave us PPP access to the internet, and before that Terminal based access!
But ad based free internet just isn't a viable option, KMART, FREEI.net, and so many others have failed. Juno and NetZero are now one company, and if there not careful, it won't be long until they are gone. Juno was really cool when people just wanted email, but now people want internet access to from them. Those dialup lines and backbones cost money, per call, per month, and per meg. And in the end, the CPM and click throughs on those banner ads just don't pay, and people find work arounds so they don't have to deal with them.
[Something witty and intelligent should have appeared here.]
[Something witty and intelligent should have appeared here.]
{Traicovn}
Not so fast now, was it "free" internet as in "free beer" or as in "free speech" ? maybe the new pay-per-month deal comes with the source code for the banner ad software on the CD ...
"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
e.g., Quantum Link, an on-line service for commodore computer users, offered a "lifetime membership" for $150.00 which promised $0/month with 5 hours usage. You still pay if you go over 5 hours, but stay under and it's free for life. When Quantum Computer Services became AOL, the new company still had to honor old contracts. You cannot bail out of contracts just by changing names. So I still have my 5 free hours with no monthly fee but on AOL now. When AOL went to flat-rate pricing, they switched everyone over. Everyone wants $19.95 flat rate, right? Not me. Luckily I saved the letters from Q-Link/AOL offering me that lifetime free membership. So you AOLers, now you know why AOL still talks about free and per-minute charges. It's to acomodate us fossils.
The only thing that's news about this is that someone thought this would last a "lifetime". With companies like NetZero and Juno scrambling to keep afloat, and others like Spinway sinking into the depths of f***edcompany.com, it's a wonder anybody has free internet access anymore. Plus, the old addage is true when it comes to free internet services; "you get what you pay for".
It's kind of funny, I was in a post office last week to mail off a letter, and I saw the CDs sitting on the counter. Canada Post selling internet access, I thought to my self, how silly is that?
I looked a little closer at the CD and noticed that it was just a 3web CD. Since 3web went under a while ago, I thought it was strange that Canada Post was still selling the CDs. Oh well, I guess it just took some time for the memo to get around.
Enjoy your job, make lots of money, work within the law. Choose any two.
I don't understand how the government allows advertising to be fundamentally different from the terms of service of the product being advertised. We are constantly being inundated with this shit too--it's the rule not the exception.
- How many FREE products are out there where the ad says FREE 50 times in 60 seconds, but in fine print it says there is a $8.00 S&H charge? I call on the FCC to define the meaning of the word "FREE" as "no money changes hands for you to get this product or service".
- If the courts know that it isn't for LIFE but instead until the company goes under, why do advertising regulators allow the phrase FOR LIFE in ANY ads??? I call on the regulators to require that ads FOR LIFE have money in trust in case they go under if they use that phrase.
- Why are ads for diet pills and get rich quick schemes allowed to show testimonial after testimonial of people talking about how product X helped them become smarter, thinner or richer while the tiny print says "Results Not Typical"? Let's require TYPICAL testimonials, how about that! Or require the really skinny people to say in their testimonial "I was AMAZED at how much weight I lost since my results were so atypical!"
I really don't get it. My wife is from Europe, where truthfulness in ads seems to be something the governments still care about, and it has taken her YEARS to build up enough skepticism of ads to not believe all the patently fraudulent bullshit that is perpetrated here.
I understand caveat emptor and all that, but it has really gotten out of hand. When was the last time you saw an ad that was TRUTHFUL! Coke won't make you happy. Miller Lite won't get you girls. A Lexus doesn't make you a successful business man. You can't "Set it and Forget It" with that cheesy chicken roaster. Drinking parseley juice from your $200 juicers isn't going to make you feel younger. Diet-ZX isn't free. OxyClean won't clean your carpets. I doubt Massengil really gives you that "fresh" feeling either.
What are the rules that have to be followed? Are there ANY? Does anyone CHECK the ads? IS ANYONE OUT THERE???
Crash
"The difference between theory and practice is small in theory and large in practice..."
was the spam. They promised to give you free DSL for life - well, you still have DSL, it's just not functional, there's that nice NIC in your PC now, just use it for an extra LAN connection for your internal house network.
Coming soon, free pr0n for life. OK, so it's pictures from a retirement home, but what were you expecting?
--- Will in Seattle - What are you doing to fight the War?
this would be a great reason to sue the company to fucking smithereens, but unfortunately it has probably already folded so one couldn't collect anything.
What? Sue Canada Post to smithereens? Canada's national mail service, owned by the Government of Canada? Actually, counting the national debt, the finances of the company are in the red by about $500 billion, which is not unlike most dot-coms.
Oh well... one can always visit the homes of its boardmembers with a cigar-cutter, mafia-style, and make yourself a nice necklace of fingers
Let me give you the address of the Chairman: 24 Sussex Drive, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada. You can't miss it; it's the one with big tall gates, security cameras, and badass RCMP everywhere.
Actually us Canadians prefer to express our displeasure non-lethally, with pies in the face and such. But don't get too close, he's been known to personally handle protesters by the neck. Probably something he learned from watching Hockey Night in Canada.
Toronto-area transit rider? Rate your ride.
Times have changed,
ISPs are getting worse,
They won't obey their contract,
They just want to fart and curse!
Should we blame the government?
Or blame society?
Or should we blame the images on TV?
No!
Blame Canada! Blame Canada!
With all their beady little eyes,
And flappin' heads so full of lies,
Blame Canada! Blame Canada!
We need to form a full assault!
It's Canada's fault!
Don't blame me for AOL,
They saw the contract loophole,
And now their off to bloody Hell!
And of course Bill Gates,
One had Solaris on his shelf,
But now, when I see him,
He tells me to fsck myself!
Well,
Blame Canada! Blame Canada!
It seems everything's gone wrong
Since Canada came along.
Blame Canada! Blame Canada!
They're not even a real country, anyway.
My ISP could have lasted me until 2094,
Instead it's on the heap like the Adam and Commodore.
Should we blame Jon Katz?
Should we blame Wired?
Or the marketers who allowed it be retired?
Heck, no!
Blame Canada! Blame Canada!
With all their hockey hullabaloo,
And that bitch Anne Murray, too,
Blame Canada!
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(Offer subject to change at any time, but most likely right after we get your ten bucks.)
First they try this goofy PosteCS system which, as far as I can tell, is directly trying to compete with encrypted e-mail (we can blame the US, Canada, AND France for this dumb idea).
Then they try this eBillPay idea to send checks through the internet, which is competing with exactly the same service that is offered by most major banks (actually, since everybody seems to call it "eBillPay," I'm not sure who really is in control of it).
And finally in the case of Canada Post, they decide trying to branch out into an entirely new realm: The ISP business. This is really interesting in and of itself because they'll have to outsource at least part of it to the local telecommunications people (I'm not sure what's state-owned up there and what's not).
The USPS seems to be getting some sense and doing more with the net. According to their website, they'll print letters and cards and such and mail them instead of just checks (which sounds a lot like a telegram). But that still has to compete with e-mail.
Personally, I think their best bet is to become digital certificate authorities/digital key signatories/something along those lines. It could be seen as an expansion of their existing services instead of branching out into new ones, as a lot of what they offer is confirmation of mailing, delivery, receipt, insurance, protecting message/package from point A to point B, and so on.
And since it's already a fellony to defraud them and they have their own law enforcement arm, they could do a hell of a lot more than what Verisign could do when they gave a Microsoft certificate to the wrong guy ("I'm sorry, you'll have to download this new Windows patch... We promise it won't happen again!").
Hell, if I can get my passport at the post office...
It actually works really well on carpets. You just have to clean the carpet before the stain sets in. Don't be disparaging an actual good product.
CAVEAT EMPTOR.