MVM@cup.portal.COM (01/13/89)
SECOND ROUND OF ANNOUNCEMENTS and ANSWERS to COMMON QUESTIONS
REGARDING the PC PURSUIT PRICE CHANGE
1/12/89
To ALL PC Pursuit customers:
Before reading this bulletin further, you should make sure you have read the
first "ADDITIONAL ANNOUNCEMENTs..." bulletin.
It has been just over a week since the first "ADDITIONAL ANNOUNCEMENTs...".
We have had a favorable response to those announcements. However, the
messages appearing everywhere are still rather heated, fueled by incorrect
(although often understandable) assumptions, unanswered concerns, and the
like. As a result of the incredible availability of suggestions (and other
input), we have some new announcements. Following these announcements are
some more answers to common concerns & questions.
The new announcements:
1. WE WILL BE ABLE TO ALLOW USE OF A SINGLE ID WITH THE MULTIPLE ACCOUNT
OPTION. That is, you will be able to order any number of accounts
(blocks of 30 monthly hours at $30 each) to work with one ID/PW combo.
This should improve accounting and ease of use issues. Multiple account
IDs will also correspondingly multiply the second tier break point.
2. IF YOU ORDER A MULTIPLE ACCOUNT ID BEFORE MAY 31st, 1989, EXISTING
CUSTOMERS WILL NOT BE CHARGED AN ADDITIONAL "SIGN-UP" FEE. Beginning
with June 1st, 1989, each time you call/write to INCREASE the number of
accounts (or blocks of 30 monthly hours) covered under your ID, you will
be charged a $30 sign-up fee (which will likely be called a processing
fee). UNDER NO CIRCUMSTANCES WILL MORE THAN ONE SIGN-UP FEE BE APPLIED
PER ID CHANGE/ORDER (even if many accounts are added/ordered under that
one ID). There will be no charge to reduce the number of accounts
covered (or to cancel).
3. WE ARE EVALUATING OPTIONS OF SPECIAL PRICING FOR ACCESS TO PC PURSUIT
NETWORK (DAF) HOSTS. Suggestions are encouraged. All adjustments
(including those already announced online) will be finalized and more
formally announced (via mailing & Net Exchange) in February.
4. If you exceed your cap (some multiple of 30 hours), you will receive a
statement the following month showing what your total charge is. THIS
STATEMENT WILL INCLUDE CALL DETAIL. The specific detail to be included
has not yet been finalized (since we now have until May to adjust this).
Addressing common concerns & questions:
1. Why not have a higher cap? Why is a cap needed? Does Telenet want some
types of customers to cancel? Why not just charge more for unlimited
use? Doesn't Telenet appreciate Pursuiters' FCC effort? What of the
rule-of-thumb principle which states: As sales/customers increase, prices
go down (or stay the same longer)?
All of these questions can be answered through an understanding of PC
Pursuit's origins & growth. When PC Pursuit was launched, it was viewed
as a service that would use the excess capacity of other services -- ie.
it didn't have to pay for many of its own costs. This concept (called an
"incremental service") works fine, as long as the incremental service's
use (and cost) is largely insignificant compared to the other services
that it is riding on. You may have noticed that Telenet has not
advertised (or otherwise significantly promoted) PC Pursuit. That is
because an incremental service (by its nature) is unable to accommodate a
significant number of customers. What wasn't counted on is the awesome
power of word-of-month within the hobbyists' community (BBSes). The
Pursuit customer base began to grow very quickly, and has never stopped.
It got to the point that the quality of service degraded to the point
that even patient customers had difficulty using PC Pursuit (about a year
ago things were at an all time low). To make matters worse, there were
too many customers (and too much usage) to consider it as an incremental
service any longer. So not only was there no marginal profit, there
wasn't money to pay for ANY improvements, expansion, development, or
dedicated personnel. This was the situation when I started as PC
Pursuit's Product Manager in February 1988. I was asked to review the
product, and make recommendations to either "fix" the service, or cancel
it altogether. The most obvious solution (and many were in favor of
this) was to cancel the service immediately (PC Pursuit wasn't paying its
way, customers were complaining of poor service & support, there were
serious billing problems, lots of abusers & hacking -- all because the
service was not intended to grow as it had). Keeping the service the
same was not an option either -- Telenet prides itself for providing
*superior* quality datacomm at the best rates possible.
The key to the solution was that we found a pricing scheme which is still
extremely low, has many of the same attractions as the original
(predictable fixed monthly bill, large blocks of time already paid for so
regular extended use is encouraged), was fairest to the majority of
customers (just increasing the price substantially would be unfair to
low-end users -- who have less presence but are in the majority),
provides for enough funds to pay for needed improvements, and finally
removes the second class stigma because it becomes a regular service (ie.
it makes some profit for the company while paying its own way). In
addition, it was agreed that our customers deserved to see substantial
improvements BEFORE a price change, as evidence to PC Pursuit's greatly
improved priority. This is why we waited almost a full year to announce
any price changes (although exact pricing wasn't finalized until December
1988).
We want to work with you. We are listening to everything you are
suggesting. Together, we can try to satisfy as many peoples' needs as
possible. To offer something for every type of customer is the goal, as
long as its fair to the majority (which includes casual users). If you
step back and look at the new pricing on its own (its not objective to
compare it to old pricing which wasn't designed to pay its own way), its
hard to argue that we still don't have a pretty amazing price. If you
ask our competitors, they're still scratching their heads wondering how
we can keep the price so low and claim to make ANY profit. I'm very
proud of this. It would have been impossible to do if the FCC had ruled
differently last year. I repeat my thanks to you for your efforts.
2. Why did Telenet not give more notice (to existing customers or recent
sign-ups)? The announcement was made as soon as new pricing was
approved. The approval was delayed several times, resulting in a rather
small margin of time. This small margin was pointed out by many and is
one of the reasons that over cap charges were delayed until May 1989.
3. Why doesn't Telenet offer online password changes, or online charges-to-
date information, etc..., like other "online services"? Telenet's Public
Data Network (PDN -- which PC Pursuit uses) should not be compared to a
centralized computer system based online service. It is a long distance
communications *network* based service. Most such features are not
theoretically impossible, but they are not nearly as straight forward to
implement. A fairer comparison would be that of another LD service, such
as AT&T's Reach out America. This service doesn't even have IDs
(allowing the customer to call from any phone) -- as far as I know. That
said, don't be too surprised if you see a new feature in this catagory in
the near future (I can't be specific, it has not yet been announced).
Regrettably, billing or usage information online is not expected anytime
soon.
4. How much $ did Pursuit get in '88, how many customers, what is average
usage... or other statistics/figures? The problem with these sorts of
questions is that answering them could potentially break a rule that I
can not break -> Thou shall not disclose proprietary information,
especially if it is of any value to a competitor. I can say two things-
we have many thousands of customers, and, the average usage per month is
well under 30 hours per month.
Sincerely,
Peter Naleszkiewicz
Outdial Services Product Managerjwright@atanasoff.cs.iastate.edu (Jim Wright) (01/13/89)
In article <8901121632.1.21423@cup.portal.com> MVM@cup.portal.COM writes: [...] > Addressing common concerns & questions: [...] > Sincerely, > Peter Naleszkiewicz > Outdial Services Product Manager Thanks for the message. But you haven't answered the most important question of all: Did you actually read all those thousands of messages left on the Net Exchange? :-) :-) :-) :-)