Product Refresh
Quote from: Mand [For new customers it's not about clawing back profit, it's about the costs we have absorbed as part of that contract, which by the time a cancellation request comes in a customer has already had the benefit of. Ultimately if we didn't do this and lost a lot of money that way all products would need to increase in cost to ensure we still made a profit overall.
[...]
If you look at costs for a new customer, who has hardware and activation and a house move, this comes to £130 alone (hardware £30, activation £40, house move £60). That's without any projected profit or support costs included.
Maybe I used the wrong word 'profit' when I was really referring to the difference between the monthly subscription and the cost of paying BT and your infrastructure to provide the connection on a monthly basis. Yes I agree that the costs could be higher than £30, but each of the items you quote would not be applicable to every 18 month contract, e.g.:
- activation doesn't apply to existing customers
- hardware may or may not be needed
- house move will only apply to a small proportion of customers
Because of that uncertainty, I guessed that the percentage of the monthly subscription that goes to cover margin and freebies was between 25% and 50%. I arbirtarly took 25% as the allocation for paying back the freebies, so on a £6/month Value contact on a market 3 exchange, that comes out to be £27. I rounded up to £30 as a rough estimated of the average amount you needed to recover.
So, I agree that, in some cases, the actual figure may well be higher, and if you limited the recovery to the actual upfront costs on a case-by-case basis, that would be fine too. In fact it is probably a fairer way to do it since someone, say, who hasn't taken advantage of a 'free' house move doesn't then need to get charged a proportion of those costs.
Overall, I don't think it changes anything regarding the conclusion in my original post
Quote Recommendations:
1. Offer a 1 month option with no modem, or 3 month discount, just the standard monthly charge according the the exchange you are on.
2. Reduce the 18 month contract to a 12 month option. 'Freebies' might need to be adjusted a bit.
3. Cap the cost of contract termination to something reasonably reflecting the actual cost to PN.
4. Give 1 months notice of new products being rolled out and of others becoming unavailable
Quote As Kitz has said a few posts back, and (I think) James said earlier on in the thread, this was released to PUG under NDA last week, where we pretty much said everything that has been said in this thread, but as you can see here we are!
Phil
Thanks for that Phil. What a pity you weren't listen to. Had they taken some of your comments on board the present fiasco could have been avoided.
jim:green quote tag fixed mod:end
Quote from: Dodgydog sorry Mand but after your reply to my earlier post i again phoned sales and was told that the new unlimited product is "not really suitable for serious gamers due to expected lag " even though info on main page still says it is . They also said that there were errors on site about new products due to the rush to get them out and secrecy so competitors would get a suprise (didnt say exactly suprise but near enough). I dont think unlimited is suitable for familys unless plusnet would like to come and referee teenagers in dispute over capped bandwith.Sales also said there would be a product refresh when adsl2+ roles out which would definately involve the capping levels . Having been with plusnet for 7+ years now i have ridden many storms and up till now they have always managed to bail out the boat just in time . I hope this time is no different and they realise that with the credit crunch that people are going to be looking ever closer at exactly what they are getting . For my personal opinion of the new products so far in the words of the great you tube orator Peanut "you can polish a t**d but its still a t**d "
The Unlimited product is suitable for gamers, rate limits will not equal latency on gaming. The traffic is still in Gold in terms of prioritisation.
There were a few bugs on the site on launch day, as is normal with a project of this size, however the vast majority of these were sorted sharpish.
The ADSL2+ launch will not necessarily mean a new set of products, but we haven't finalised anything internally regarding that yet so I'm unsure how the Sales guys are so sure on that.
In any case, I've raised these issues to the management team, and these issues will be corrected within the CSC. I'm sorry that you were given wrong information, and it will be dealt with.
Quote from: Assos
Quote from: Mand No, once you're on a rolling monthly contract you remain on it.
So does that mean that I can upgrade the home connection to Pro over the summer, then downgrade to Value when I come back to uni and that account will stay on a 1 month contract throughout?
Thought not
The question was specifically regarding what happens after the initial 18 months is up. At that point you'd be able to move between the new products every 30 days without a new contract.
Quote from: Mand
Quote from: Dodgydog sorry Mand but after your reply to my earlier post i again phoned sales and was told that the new unlimited product is "not really suitable for serious gamers due to expected lag " even though info on main page still says it is . They also said that there were errors on site about new products due to the rush to get them out and secrecy so competitors would get a suprise (didnt say exactly suprise but near enough). I dont think unlimited is suitable for familys unless plusnet would like to come and referee teenagers in dispute over capped bandwith.Sales also said there would be a product refresh when adsl2+ roles out which would definately involve the capping levels . Having been with plusnet for 7+ years now i have ridden many storms and up till now they have always managed to bail out the boat just in time . I hope this time is no different and they realise that with the credit crunch that people are going to be looking ever closer at exactly what they are getting . For my personal opinion of the new products so far in the words of the great you tube orator Peanut "you can polish a t**d but its still a t**d "
The Unlimited product is suitable for gamers, rate limits will not equal latency on gaming. The traffic is still in Gold in terms of prioritisation.
There were a few bugs on the site on launch day, as is normal with a project of this size, however the vast majority of these were sorted sharpish.
The ADSL2+ launch will not necessarily mean a new set of products, but we haven't finalised anything internally regarding that yet so I'm unsure how the Sales guys are so sure on that.
In any case, I've raised these issues to the management team, and these issues will be corrected within the CSC. I'm sorry that you were given wrong information, and it will be dealt with.
Hi Mand - That's not what this page says http://www.plus.net/support/broadband/quality_broadband/traffic_prioritisation.shtml, it says gaming is "titanium" on "unlimited" and "gold" on "value".
Cheers.
Quote from: dgdclynx Firstly I will just verify that PUG howled when they saw what PNs intentions were. I think all points in this thread were brought up in the very few days available.
Secondly John Elvin in the customer-feedback newsgroup triggered off my thinking this morning. Cos I am old it takes some time for me to see the wood from the trees. Here is what I just posted in that newsgroup....
.......
And now what has slowly dawned on me is that PN is now all about attracting new customers in a big way to rival the likes of Tiscali etc by supplying the essentials and existing users will have to either like it or lump it so value add-ons such as USENET, webspace etc will be a very low priority for manpower investment and presumably will wither away and eventually disappear. So everything that made PN special for us wont be around anymore. The current quality staff wont want to remain in such an environment.
Cos I am old it takes time for me to think things thru but John Elvin has triggered off these thoughts in me.
I've started a new topic to discuss what is happening with PAYH/CCGI: http://community.plus.net/forum/index.php/topic,74181.new.html#new
As none of the new products include hosting I suspect the future for these services is pretty bleak.
Hi
A couple of questions about the new products, sorry if they have been asked before, I have had a look through the posts, and I can’t see these. I bet after saying this I will suddenly notice them
1. The definition of “line speed”
Looking at the Plusnet Pro maximum expected upstream speeds here:
http://www.plus.net/support/broadband/quality_broadband/upstream_speeds.shtml
is says“Line speed”
What does this mean in general as I can’t seem to find a clear definition!
The only definition I can see is on the downstream page
http://www.plus.net/support/broadband/quality_broadband/speed.shtml
Where it says
“Line speed - the fastest speed your line will support*”
More specifically for a Max DSL connection on an exchange that is not yet 21CN and does not have a date as it is a small market town.
However I have a good connection about 6000Mbits down and 448kbits up. If I were to move from Premier (option 1) to Plusnet Pro would I in theory get a better upstream speed?
Or am I limited to 448Kbits because I am not ADSL2+ I accept I may lose a bit of the downstream, but that it OK by me if I get a faster upstream speed.
My router supports ADSL2+ so hardware should not be an issue.
I know there are differences regarding the differences between peak and offpeak times between Premier and Pro, but that is not a concern given my usage.
2. Static IP address
I have a static IP address if I move from Premier to Pro will I be able to keep the same static IP address, or will I get a new static IP address allocated?
On a general observation I don’t like the 12 Month Contract or the free router for existing customers like quite a few others as I can see from other postings!
I can see for new customers why you may want to do this to cover start up costs, but for existing customers who I suspect won’t want a router (as they are already connected!) it seems a bit “off” especially for customers who have been with Plusnet for some time. I think some thinking about this is required as it does nothing to encourage customer loyalty.
In general it costs a company a lot less resource to keep an existing customer than it does to get a new one.
Thanks
Steve
A couple of questions about the new products, sorry if they have been asked before, I have had a look through the posts, and I can’t see these. I bet after saying this I will suddenly notice them
1. The definition of “line speed”
Looking at the Plusnet Pro maximum expected upstream speeds here:
http://www.plus.net/support/broadband/quality_broadband/upstream_speeds.shtml
is says“Line speed”
What does this mean in general as I can’t seem to find a clear definition!
The only definition I can see is on the downstream page
http://www.plus.net/support/broadband/quality_broadband/speed.shtml
Where it says
“Line speed - the fastest speed your line will support*”
More specifically for a Max DSL connection on an exchange that is not yet 21CN and does not have a date
as it is a small market town.However I have a good connection about 6000Mbits down and 448kbits up. If I were to move from Premier (option 1) to Plusnet Pro would I in theory get a better upstream speed?
Or am I limited to 448Kbits because I am not ADSL2+ I accept I may lose a bit of the downstream, but that it OK by me if I get a faster upstream speed.
My router supports ADSL2+ so hardware should not be an issue.
I know there are differences regarding the differences between peak and offpeak times between Premier and Pro, but that is not a concern given my usage.
2. Static IP address
I have a static IP address if I move from Premier to Pro will I be able to keep the same static IP address, or will I get a new static IP address allocated?
On a general observation I don’t like the 12 Month Contract or the free router for existing customers like quite a few others as I can see from other postings!
I can see for new customers why you may want to do this to cover start up costs, but for existing customers who I suspect won’t want a router (as they are already connected!) it seems a bit “off” especially for customers who have been with Plusnet for some time. I think some thinking about this is required as it does nothing to encourage customer loyalty.
In general it costs a company a lot less resource to keep an existing customer than it does to get a new one.
Thanks
Steve
