Well, I got suckered in by Smart Beep’s advertising blitz offering pager service for $1.99 a month. There was a startup fee, and I had to buy their pager, but I would still come out ahead after a year. WRONG! After the first 1-year contract was up, they jacked up the price by $1 a month. O.K., $2.99 is still a pretty good deal for pager service. Well, I got the invoice for the 3rd year, and they jacked up the price AGAIN, this time $2 a month. 150% price increase after only 2 years? No thanks - I can see where that’s going. I called you and said I’m not paying for that, and you said the price is not negotiable. So now you have one less customer.
Fuck you, Smart Beep. Fuck your bait and switch pricing tactics. I hope your customers start dropping like flies.
(Sorry, I know it needs more cuss words, but I just couldn’t fit 'em in.)
Did they raise the prices across the board, or if you made a new account, would you get it for $1.99 again? Because if you signed up now, and it would be $4.99 for everyone across the board, I don’t see what there is to complain about.
$5 a month… still sounds a pretty good deal to me. I pay almost $50/month for my cellphone.
So you don’t think a 150% price increase is unreasonable? Then I guess you wouldn’t mind if they raised your cell phone price by 150% over 2 years, i.e. to $125 a month?
Plus, if they keep increasing the price hike by $1 each year, in 10 years I’ll be paying $56.99. Or if they’re doubling the price increase every year, it’ll be $1034.99 (I think). At any rate, I’m not sticking around to see what their plan is.
I know they aren’t the same thing. I’m just saying that $5 a month is cheap for a pager, especially given your other options. I used to see pagers advertising as much as $20/a month. $5 is a forking value meal at McDonald’s. I leave at least that as a tip whenever I go out to eat. Big whoopie.
I’d probably look for a different cell provider if they raised it to $125/month. There’s a big difference between paying an extra $75 a month, and paying an extra $3.00. I don’t think raising prices over three years constitutes “bait and switch.” I’ve always under stood b&s to be advertising one deal and then offering you another when you came to purchase the item. What you describe is no different that Roadrunner raising my cable from 44.95 a month to 49.95 a month last year. In case you didn’t notice, many things gradually cost more over time. Perhaps they found that as their business expanded they could no longer support a $1.99/month service. Eh.
Perhaps you’d rather them still offer you the $1.99 service at a loss, until they go out of business and you can use the $20/month pager company.
I am sure a giant corporation like that will be positively devastated by the loss of $60 in annual income. I seriously doubt pagers will even be in existence in ten more years, anyway. I don’t know anyone that uses them anymore. Everyone I know has a mobile phone, even my old luddite parents.
Yep - I resisted using the message alert capability on my cell phone because it’s more awkward to carry around and has to be charged frequently, but I’m going to make the switch now, and Smart Beep can bite my hairy yellow ass.
Yeah, a 10% increase is exactly the same as a 150% increase.:rolleyes:
And let’s keep comparing apples and oranges, shall we? Hmmm…the price of a house went up $20,000 last year; so I guess it’s o.k. to charge that much for pager service, hmmm?
The key word being “gradually”. More than doubling the price is anything but gradual.
Well then they shouldn’t have fucking offered $1.99 service in the first place. Frankly, I’ve never in my life heard of any kind of a business model where exanding your customer base makes you lose money. WTF would be the point of expanding then?
Pager service hasn’t cost $20 a month since the 1980’s. Anyone who pays that much is an idiot.
No, my ass isn’t yellow, I was just paraphrasing Homer Simpson.
Well, now I know how to make a lot of money. I’ll just start a company offering some service at an incredibly low price, then after people sign up for it, I’ll double or triple the price. I won’t lose any customers because they’ll all just think “It’s only a few dollars a month; I don’t want to be cheap”. Apparently I’m the only one in the world who seems to be bothered by such a strategy.
:rolleyes: :rolleyes: :rolleyes: :rolleyes: :rolleyes: :rolleyes: :rolleyes: :rolleyes: :rolleyes: :rolleyes: :rolleyes: :rolleyes:
I’d be willing to bet that’s exactly what happens. They know how many customers they’re likely to lose, and they know that the new rates will probably make them more money.
You are free to cancel your account with them amidst all your righteous indignation, of course, and I won’t fault you for it. But you need to lighten up a bit. It’s just a fucking pager company.
Wait … you mean that a corporation is trying to maximize their profits through a sneaky marketing tactic? That an unbelievebly low rate in fact had a hidden catch? That good deals don’t last forever?
I think it’s more a matter of the complaint being proportional to the offense. We’re not talking about an insurance company refusing to pay for your gramma’s brain transplant, we’re talking about a fucking pager company.
