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AOL to Raise Dialup Prices
United Bimmer writes "America Online has announced that it's going to raise the price on dialup users in an attempt to encourage them to upgrade to broadband. The new rates will near $26 a month, already drastically higher than the market norm for dialup access. This will bring the dialup prices to almost the exact same per month as broadband depending on your plan. However through this, they do still offer an unadvertised lower price for those who can't get or don't want broadband can request lower-priced plans, including an unadvertised offering of about $18 with a one-year commitment."
You've Got Inflation!
Less AOL users and more boadband users.. how could it get any better?
So now I can get dial-up for the same low price as broadband? Wait...
Paul: If you're reading this, pick your shoes up out of the hallway. I keep tripping over them. Slob.
you haven't heard of kismet have you ?
for the last time people, I am "frodo from middle eaRTH", not "middle eaST".
1. Give crappy dial-up service
2. Give crappy broadband service
3. Increase the price of your crappy dial-up service
4. Profit!!!! Or go out of business.
Another failed attempt to fill in step 3.
Tluin natha Linux xxizzuss uriu olt bwael mon'tun.
This will certainly chase away many of their current customers. I am unable to get DSL or Cable and Sattelite is way too expensive. If dialup prices are raised by AOL, I'm sure that many will switch to a less expensive ISP.
When I upgrade to broadband, and then cancel my service, will I continue to get billed for it anyway at the braodband rate or at the dial-up rate?
In the USA, we like stuff watered down, like beer, television, and freedom.
As if the AOL customer service was reason enough to avoid it, now they add a whole new insult. Cell phone like plan gouging and hidden pricing with contractual commitments. Of course, on the upside, this will make people switch to a new provider via economic pressure. You have to love natural selection in progress.
Wouldn't it be great if other companies did this?
Golf courses could make the hole smaller to encourage more people to buy Tiger Woods video games.
McDonalds could increase the amount of ice in drinks to make people buy bigger drinks.
Motion Picture creators could degrade the quality of videos to make people move to a new format.
Nike could make their shoes less comfortable and then sell replacement linings.
Is this funny or insightful?
It's probably both.
I don't get it.
A good case for my point would be Dish Network. As they've started updating their systems for HD, they have given current users free updates for satellite dishes. Without this option, the users could easily re-evaluate their options and check out DirecTV. When Dish finally has a complete HD solution to all their customers, they could very well up the cost of their service and customers would have to accept the fact that they can't afford the initial cost of a new satellite service. Dish Network understands that you have to upgrade some options for free or you lose a permanent revenue source.
Thats just criminal. AOL is no longer the premiere Content Provider. They will Join Qlink in the near future. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/QLink
Time Warner is now bundling AOL service with its High Speed service (to raise subscription rate for stock holders?) Everyone knows that you can get dial up as low as $9/month. Not to sound like a broken record, but BroadBand users tend to stear away from AOL - Cutting their own throat.
-- I Dont Deserve A Sig I Have Bad Karma
I have a confession to make; I once tried the AOL free trial. The free trial wasn't woth the cost!
I would bet that this is part of a larger plan, so people would be more willing to buy and download from the Net movies, music, games, etc. It is not just a push for high speed access, since TimeWarner has fingers into all kinds of media and entertainment .
All kidding aside, AOL completly relies on the fact that their customer doesn't know a thing about how computers or the internet actualy work. Just look at their commercials: (talking about their spyblocker or some such) "Because with high speed internet, the intruders come at you faster!" I don't even know where to begin with that statement. But the AOL users just nod knowingly and install more bloatware.
If forums teach us anything, it is that logic and critical thinking should be required courses in the public schools.
AOL is actually being pretty crafty about this.
They know that there's a huge number of subscribers that are scared shitless about leaving the warm embrace of AOL, and they just won't leave. They figure that some folks will upgrade to AOL broadband, and AOL makes more money on this folks. Others will pay double, even triple for phone dial-up. Just to not lose that wonderful interface. They'll even suffer pain, case in point:
I'm seeing this girl that's just scared to death of computers. AOL auto updated to the new version, and just totally screwed her computer in the process. This is not enough to get her to quit AOL. I fix her computer, requiring a complete OS reinstall, and set it to an older less toxic version... her stupid brother pops in an AOL 9.0 CD to upgrade it. It upgrades to 9.0, and then the cheap ass CD shatters from the high rotation rate of her 56x CD-ROM drive immediately post-install - totally destroys it. Then the software again does a number on her computer... and she still will not quit AOL.
Hell, AOL is now learning what drug dealers have know for a while, and are going to make bucks on it.
Do I know you?
Second... my parents (mid 50's aged) used to be stuck with a high cost ISP through a deal they got at work. When their contract expired, they switched to your average nation $10 / month dialup ISP (Qwest has decided their neighborhood doesn't warrant DSL, although they live in a suburb and cable is readily available, but overpriced for their budget).
This new ISP, unlike the old expensive one, is awful. Heaven help you if you want to send UDP traffic because it gets dropped, constantly (and on dialup, that is in fact the end of the world). Disconnections every 20 minutes, minimum. Plus, a real PITA interface with 'pop-up' blockers and 'virus scanners' that take down the web connection with frightening frequency while in fact neither blocking popups nor catching viruses and spyware. I know because, as most of you, I get the call to fix it when it is broken, and I *used* to be able to play games like Starcraft (pure UDP) with my little brother, back in the day...
This isn't just a complaint post, though. There's a market hiding in there. Specifically, I would consider recommending an ISP who charged more money in exchange for services that were actually valuable. Like ISP to backbone latency guarantees, or never a dropped packet on their network (which requires quite a bit of expensive redundant hardware and a willingness to not sell all available bandwidth), or any of a host of other non-intrusive services. You want to scan for viruses? Scan the packets before they get to me. A popup blocker? I use a *real* webrowser, I don't need it. Your ridiculous dialer app that wraps internet explorer? Just give me a phone number and an 8 line instruction page for setting up a modem shortcut.
For the right price, it *must* be possible to actually provide a true, clean, non-intrusive high quality connection at the advertised speed. Is that AOL? Probably not. But it if existed, it would be worth considering, even at $26 for dialup. The older I get, the more I am interested in exchanging my money for quality goods and services. I care about price, but I care more about what I'm getting than how much I'm getting it for. I am willing to pay more to avoid having MSN, AOL, Earthlink or any other such ISP manage my broadband connection, from experience with each of those.
Is there such a thing as a 'luxury' ISP? Maybe there should be.
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