John Linton ......after staying up late to watch the Victoria election results and then figuring it was so late might as well stay up for the Arsenal game. At least both results were fairly positive. It will be interesting to see what the more balanced political commentators make of whatever result occurs later this week - not often there is such a turnaround in an election and not often that Arsenal dominates a match so completely.
We have to make some decisions on what we will do come December 1st regarding 'naked' ADSL and how we deal with the various 'bonuses' our main carrier suppliers are offering for 'new' customers in terms of our current customers. Although customers of ADSL services are quick to sign up for the various Telstra Retail giveaways they seldom comment on the requirements for 24 month contracts or for the requirement to also use Telstra Retail's ultra high priced mobile and wire line rental and telephone call charges. I doubt that many residential customers realise that the carriers desperation to prop up their own ADSL customer base is only manifested in providing 'promotions' to their wholesale customers in terms of new customers - they simply ignore that times have changed and that it is ever more difficult to retain current customers in these times of exceptionally aggressive 'win back' campaigns. Our carrier suppliers simply ignore the immense pressures being exerted on our, and all other ISP's customer bases by the endless campaigns of Telstra Retail and TPG.
I'm not complaining, in any way, about the 'new business' bonuses being offered by our main suppliers. Using them in a way that doesn't 'annoy' current customers is hard to do. If a carrier gives us, for example only, three months free and zero activation charge for signing up a new customer on a twelve month contract that, using simple arithmetic is equivalent to a 20%+ discount on the monthly charge to the end user over a year. Attractive BUT only for a new customer. So if we somehow 'distill' these sign up bonuses into a lower monthly plan price for new users then all current customers who see those prices think they are somehow being 'cheated' by not being offered the same deals.
So it's a difficult thing to deal with and after considering various options I'm not sure that I can come up with any realistic solution. The best I can think of is to offer the first two months free for new or churn customers - using the carrier bonus to only benefit new customers.This will require some very difficult decisions, should we do that, but after many hours of thinking I can't think of any other way of passing on the bonuses without seriously damaging the ongoing revenue/profit we are currently achieving which is at the lowest level (in terms of 'profit') that it has ever been. Maybe inspiration will 'strike' later in the day?
PS: How many more federal public servants are there today than on the day Labor became the Australian Government? Answer, which surprised even me, is on page 36 of today's Sun Herald
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