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Verizon Tells Customer He Needs 75Mbps For Smoother Netflix Video
An anonymous reader writes: Verizon recently told a customer that upgrading his 50Mbps service to 75Mbps would result in smoother streaming of Netflix video. Of course, that's not true — Netflix streams at a rate of about 3.5 Mbps on average for Verizon's fiber service, so there's more than enough headroom either way. But this customer was an analyst for the online video industry, so he did some testing and snapped some screenshots for evidence. He fired up 10 concurrent streams of a Game of Thrones episode and found only 29Mbps of connection being used. This guy was savvy enough to see through Verizon's BS, but I'm sure there are millions of customers who wouldn't bat an eye at the statements they were making. The analyst "believes that the sales pitch he received is not just an isolated incident, since he got the same pitch from three sales reps over the phone and one online."
since they just throttle the connection into tiers so as to maximize profit, isn't it at least possible that the higher tiers also have lower latency or higher prioritization (among the ISP's users, not necessarily of youtube)?
"They were pure niggers." – Noam Chomsky
This tactic has been used in auto sales for years.
Selling customers at closing "undercoating, rustproofing and fabric protection" that are already part of the car, but get people to shell out extra coin for. Extended warranties fall into the same category. Just extra profit if nobody questions it.
I guess all those unemployed car sales-bodies have to take a job somewhere.
I think they deliberately fill their storefronts with toxic twerps who score the highest on sociopathy tests.
No, they pick their sales people from the stock of minimum wage skilled who fancy themselves tech savvy and then bonus them on how much they manage to sell (up sell) customers. In the words of a famous manger, you get what you bonus. Of course they will suggest you buy MORE from them because they likely get a bonus for this. Verizon KNOWS that 75mbs is pointless, that nobody is going to flood that for very long, that you are likely only ever going to need maybe 25mbs, but that doesn't mean they won't be happy to take an extra $40/month from you so your speed testing shows 75mbps.
Verizon does seem to be well stocked with these types though. I recently spent a number of hours trying to fix my FIOS internet connection with a number of them on the phone... After beating around the "Yes, I've rebooted the router" and "No, I won't directly connect my laptop up to the internet for love or money" with multiple techs over multiple hours, it turns out that they switched my connection from PPPoE to DHCP and didn't bother to tell me to change. I don't figure the first level support guys had any clue, they just read from the cue cards and if you go off script, they are helpless.
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
Dan: Plus when I called in...
Dan: They told me if I go from 50 mbps to 75 mbps i will get better netflix streaming. is that true?
Dan: Will it improve?
Robert: Yes it you have more bandwidth you will have smoother video viewing.
Dan: But isn't 50 mbps already enough?
Robert: yes it is enough. 75 will just be smoother.
So, basically Dan baited the rep into talking up the improvements related to Netflix streaming. Note also the rep was actually honest that 50 mbps was enough to stream Netflix just fine. It sort of sounds like this guy was trolling for a story, and got the sales rep to overstate the benefits with a nice leading question. Ok, so Verizon should tell their sales reps to be a bit more honest, but... I'm having a hard time generating any outrage here. Are people equally outraged when salespeople sell 4K TVs to customers who will likely never see the difference between that and a good 1080p screen at their TV size and viewing distance?
Sales rep overstates benefits of top-tier package. News at 11.
Irony: Agile development has too much intertia to be abandoned now.