 pnh102Reptiles Are Cuddly And PrettyPremium
join:2002-05-02
Mount Airy, MD | Exactly Why Capped Plans Suck Situations like these illustrate perfectly why capped data plans and smartphones simply do not mix. If everyone had unlimited plans like in the old days, the carriers would fix problems like these in record time.
Now, it is just free overage money for them.
Think before you upgrade, and look before you leap.
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Romney/Ryan 2012 - Put a couple of mature adults in charge. |
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elray
join:2000-12-16
Santa Monica, CA | said by pnh102:Situations like these illustrate perfectly why capped data plans and smartphones simply do not mix. If everyone had unlimited plans like in the old days, the carriers would fix problems like these in record time.
Now, it is just free overage money for them.
Wrong. So wrong.
The carriers have even greater incentive to see this problem fixed than in your good-old-days of unlimited plans. Consumers, especially Cupertino devotees, will be quick to blame the carrier, not the manufacturer, if they get overage charges.
Overage charging is designed to curb conscious use and change habits, not raise revenue. That's why thresholds are set to impact only a very small percentage of customers, and raised from time to time. |
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pnh102Reptiles Are Cuddly And PrettyPremium
join:2002-05-02
Mount Airy, MD
1 edit | said by elray:The carriers have even greater incentive to see this problem fixed than in your good-old-days of unlimited plans. Consumers, especially Cupertino devotees, will be quick to blame the carrier, not the manufacturer, if they get overage charges. Except that in the case of some users, they are now paying the price for what is obviously a screwup outside of their control. Whether or not this is a problem with Apple or a given carrier, the customer should not be paying for or having to be inconvenienced by these problems.
Either way, with unlimited data, the user wins, and whatever the cause of the problem is, be it Apple or the carrier, they will have a far greater incentive to fix the problem, since they won't be able to immediately pass the costs of the problem down to the customer.
said by elray:Overage charging is designed to curb conscious use and change habits, not raise revenue. That's why thresholds are set to impact only a very small percentage of customers, and raised from time to time. If this is true, then why don't providers like Verizon and AT&T simply shut off or severely throttle the service when the user hits the cap? That would be far more effective in curbing conscious use and not raising revenue.
I will never understand how a company I pay is somehow in a position to tell me that I am to be penalized for using a level of service that they arbitrarily deem to be excessive, and "penalize" me accordingly. Who do they think they are? My mom?
Disclaimer - I currently have one Android phone with an unlimited Verizon plan and I'm still on a contract with them. When that contract runs out, I do not plan to upgrade phones through Verizon, because I do not want to go to a capped plan.
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Romney/Ryan 2012 - Put a couple of mature adults in charge. |
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| reply to elray
Bull$shit!
Utter nonesense! I mean, it doesn't affect me, but your threshold comment is just crap. The guys are in it to make money first and foremost. Social engineering is way down on the list... |
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| reply to elray
How do you figure ?"Overage charging is designed to curb conscious use and change habits, not raise revenue."
What a load of bovine excrement! The carriers want to/will charge you as much as they can for as little data as they have to handle. Their overage charges are a way to add bottom line revenue without any capital investment. Caps and cap overage charges are not there to curb conscious use and change habits because the carriers want their customers to have a warm fuzzy feeling they're there to generate MORE revenue plain and simple. IF every user suddenly minimized their usage, the carriers would still bitch about the amount of data being too high! Why have a "smart phone" if you are PENALIZED for using its features, features that somehow consumes data when not even being used. AT&T should be all over the great "APPLE" if there is indeed a bug as reported by users especially after Verizon had the same issue! |
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elray
join:2000-12-16
Santa Monica, CA | reply to jjeffeory
said by jjeffeory:Bull$shit!
Utter nonesense! I mean, it doesn't affect me, but your threshold comment is just crap. The guys are in it to make money first and foremost. Social engineering is way down on the list...
You fail to understand the basic concept of goodwill.
It costs a lot to earn, but is easily burned.
Cellco would much rather sell you "unlimited" at a higher basic rent and enjoy the consistent, measurable contract income, and the average consumer will gladly pay the higher rate to lose meter-anxiety. But that model simply doesn't work with wireless broadband, where government administration of spectrum and pesky physics get in the way. |
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| reply to elray
said by elray:said by pnh102:Situations like these illustrate perfectly why capped data plans and smartphones simply do not mix. If everyone had unlimited plans like in the old days, the carriers would fix problems like these in record time.
Now, it is just free overage money for them.
Wrong. So wrong. The carriers have even greater incentive to see this problem fixed than in your good-old-days of unlimited plans. Consumers, especially Cupertino devotees, will be quick to blame the carrier, not the manufacturer, if they get overage charges. Overage charging is designed to curb conscious use and change habits, not raise revenue. That's why thresholds are set to impact only a very small percentage of customers, and raised from time to time. LOL. |
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elray
join:2000-12-16
Santa Monica, CA | reply to pnh102
said by pnh102:said by elray:The carriers have even greater incentive to see this problem fixed than in your good-old-days of unlimited plans. Consumers, especially Cupertino devotees, will be quick to blame the carrier, not the manufacturer, if they get overage charges. Except that in the case of some users, they are now paying the price for what is obviously a screwup outside of their control. Whether or not this is a problem with Apple or a given carrier, the customer should not be paying for or having to be inconvenienced by these problems. Which is why the carriers have a greater incentive to fix it than they would under "unlimited" plans. The customer has been wronged, won't easily forgive the sting, and doesn't really care who is technically at-fault.
said by pnh102:said by elray:Overage charging is designed to curb conscious use and change habits, not raise revenue. That's why thresholds are set to impact only a very small percentage of customers, and raised from time to time. If this is true, then why don't providers like Verizon and AT&T simply shut off or severely throttle the service when the user hits the cap? That would be far more effective in curbing conscious use and not raising revenue. I will never understand how a company I pay is somehow in a position to tell me that I am to be penalized for using a level of service that they arbitrarily deem to be excessive, and "penalize" me accordingly. Who do they think they are? My mom? Disclaimer - I currently have one Android phone with an unlimited Verizon plan and I'm still on a contract with them. When that contract runs out, I do not plan to upgrade phones through Verizon, because I do not want to go to a capped plan. The thresholds are admittedly arbitrary - but there has to be some limit established, that can be understood by one and all in 30 seconds, which Mom approves of.
I agree that a better model would involve notification and throttling rather than charging overages. There are carriers who offer that. Clearly, if you don't agree with the terms of your contract, you should not renew. |
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Lamiel
join:2008-04-05
Saint Johns, MI Reviews:
 ·Skyweb Online
| reply to elray
said by elray:said by jjeffeory:Bull$shit!
Utter nonesense! I mean, it doesn't affect me, but your threshold comment is just crap. The guys are in it to make money first and foremost. Social engineering is way down on the list...
You fail to understand the basic concept of goodwill. It costs a lot to earn, but is easily burned. Cellco would much rather sell you "unlimited" at a higher basic rent and enjoy the consistent, measurable contract income, and the average consumer will gladly pay the higher rate to lose meter-anxiety. But that model simply doesn't work with wireless broadband, where government administration of spectrum and pesky physics get in the way. When you say "pesky physics" I assume you're reffering to the so-called "spectrum crisis", correct? There is no spectrum crisis. There is only a backhaul crisis, brought on by the carriers' reluctance to invest in network improvements. The fact that these carriers openly state that the vast majority of their users consume only a small amount of bandwidth per account is ample evidence of this. If caps were about protecting the network from congestion, throttling the top 2% of smartphone junkies would make far more sense than decreasing available bandwidth and increasing costs for the bulk of their customers. It's all a shell game. Don't be fooled.
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Core2Quad Q9450 @ 3.4GHz, XFX 780i SLI mobo, MSI GTX 560 OC, 4GB Patriot Viper DDR2-1066, Samsung 20x optical, Samsung F3 1TB HDD, Antec TP3 650 watt PSU, CoolerMaster Centurion 5 case, Win7 Home Premium 64 bit... |
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elray
join:2000-12-16
Santa Monica, CA | said by Lamiel:When you say "pesky physics" I assume you're reffering to the so-called "spectrum crisis", correct? There is no spectrum crisis. There is only a backhaul crisis, brought on by the carriers' reluctance to invest in network improvements. The fact that these carriers openly state that the vast majority of their users consume only a small amount of bandwidth per account is ample evidence of this. If caps were about protecting the network from congestion, throttling the top 2% of smartphone junkies would make far more sense than decreasing available bandwidth and increasing costs for the bulk of their customers. It's all a shell game. Don't be fooled.
Haven't been fooled yet.
There are carriers that throttle instead of charging overages, which I agree with you is a better practice. I suggest you vote with your wallet and migrate to one of them.
There is most certainly a spectrum crisis. Backhaul upgrades are not without cost, but they are achievable. Squeezing 100x more data through the same local tower airwaves on a few 6 Mhz blocks... not likely. |
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Lamiel
join:2008-04-05
Saint Johns, MI Reviews:
·Skyweb Online
| 100x more data through the same local tower? Of course not. 100x more data through 100 more towers? Big difference. Now obviously, I don't expect the carriers to increase the number of their towers one hundred-fold. But we don't need that now anyway. Just doubling the number of towers with dedicated hardline backhaul would eliminate the congestion they're whining about right now. Too much investment? Okay. Just increasing the number of towers by one quarter would remove any logical defense for caps and overages (that's assuming they even have a logical defense now, which is highly suspect). The point is that there's no shortage of spectrum - there's just a shortage of towers with backhaul. If you and I are connecting on the same frequency, but to two different towers, ten miles apart, we are not congesting each other's bandwidth.
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Core2Quad Q9450 @ 3.4GHz, XFX 780i SLI mobo, MSI GTX 560 OC, 4GB Patriot Viper DDR2-1066, Samsung 20x optical, Samsung F3 1TB HDD, Antec TP3 650 watt PSU, CoolerMaster Centurion 5 case, Win7 Home Premium 64 bit... |
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 BF69Premium
join:2004-07-28
Camden, TN | reply to pnh102
said by pnh102:If this is true, then why don't providers like Verizon and AT&T simply shut off or severely throttle the service when the user hits the cap? Because moron would complain that their service or phone is "broken". Then gat all mad when it's explained that they went over. Having a hard cap with high overages gets one's attention. If I know there isn't an overage just throttling I might not give a shit about going over. Remember even at 150 kbps I could still theoretically us 35 GB a month. Not to mention I'm sure there would be some technical issues with trying to do that. Also what happens when VoLTE comes out? You can't cut of data and still over voice.
You can make a point about the caps being too low for the price they charge but the days of unlimited are long over and it's simply not realistic to offer that now. Maybe in 10 years but not today. |
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 AVDRespice, Adspice, ProspicePremium
join:2003-02-06
Onion, NJ
kudos:1 | reply to elray
Re: Exactly Why Capped Plans Suck said by elray:The thresholds are admittedly arbitrary - but there has to be some limit established, that can be understood by one and all in 30 seconds, which Mom approves of.
apparently my Mom is a lot smarter than yours.
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--Standard disclaimers apply.-- |
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| said by AVD:said by elray:The thresholds are admittedly arbitrary - but there has to be some limit established, that can be understood by one and all in 30 seconds, which Mom approves of.
apparently my Mom is a lot smarter than yours. Winning! |
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