Darin,
Surely you at least give the paying customers priority over the non-paying? It’s one thing to say “I have to write paychecks no matter what”. It’s another to say “I’ll give away my support to free customers AND degrade support for paying customers
as a result.” Your tech support guy “walking Grandma through getting her email” is necessarily not accessible for the duration to paying customers.
This means your staffing must be large enough to never have any queuing, or you’re giving away your paying customers' time to non-paying customers. Neither approach is scalable in a competitive business environment, because SOMEBODY is paying
for all those resources, and if it’s your customers, they will buy elsewhere. Your approach only work until you run out of other people’s money.
-mel
I applaud your commitment to helping your local community. Just want to point out that this is a charity because it does not scale. Nobody could build out a FTTH network and make it free as a business case. But there are plenty of people
that made a network for their neighbors and provided that for free. Maybe a person had a commercial fiber to his home and thought he could just as well share it. This might be on a bigger scale but it is the same.
Regards,
Baldur
Darin,
Our business support and residential support is the same department. I
have to pay those people to be in the office either way so it doesn't
cost me any "more" to provide support for the residences. Yes, walking
Grandma through getting her email can sometimes be a chore but that
person is on the payroll whether he/she is helping Grandma or sitting
there chatting with his/her co-worker. If we dumped all the residential
customers we would still have the same cost structure we do now.
Again, it's been free for the last 7 years at this point. I've never
been one to really do what I "should" anyway.
Aaron
On 12/28/2020 11:48 AM, Darin Steffl wrote:
> Aaron,
>
> The "Free" service doesn't cover your cost of support which is much
> higher for residential than any business customer. Our residential
> customers call at least 15x more often compared to business customers
> compared on a 1:1 ratio.
>
> I honestly can't fathom providing free residential service because we
> make enough money on the business side of things. You should be
> charging something, at least $20-30 per month.
>
> On Mon, Dec 28, 2020 at 11:15 AM Aaron Wendel
> <aaron@wholesaleinternet.net <mailto:aaron@wholesaleinternet.net>> wrote:
>
> The $300 covers the equipment and the time to send someone out to a
> house to install it. If $300 is too much you can pay in 12
> installments
> of $25.
>
> The TIK alone costs us about $250.
>
> Aaron
>
>
> On 12/27/2020 5:04 AM, Mark Tinka wrote:
> >
> >
> > On 12/26/20 20:48, Darin Steffl wrote:
> >
> >> Aaron,
> >>
> >> One simple question. Why on earth would you offer free internet
> >> service? How and why? Your site show 1 Gig symmetrical for free
> when
> >> you should be a minimum of $65 per month to be competitive.
> >
> > They also ask for no monthly fee after a single payment of US$300.
> >
> > Considering the 2Gbps package costs US$49.95, you'd guess they'd
> value
> > the 1Gbps service at, say US$27/month, give or take.
> >
> > So that US$300 provides a bit of coverage, perhaps 1 year, in which
> > time they'd have likely upgraded the customer.
> >
> > Mark.
>
> --
> ================================================================
> Aaron Wendel
> Chief Technical Officer
> Wholesale Internet, Inc. (AS 32097)
> (816)550-9030
> http://www.wholesaleinternet.com <http://www.wholesaleinternet.com>
> ================================================================
>
>
>
> --
> Darin Steffl
> Minnesota WiFi
> www.mnwifi.com <http://www.mnwifi.com/>
> 507-634-WiFi
> Like us on Facebook <http://www.facebook.com/minnesotawifi>
--
================================================================
Aaron Wendel
Chief Technical Officer
Wholesale Internet, Inc. (AS 32097)
(816)550-9030
http://www.wholesaleinternet.com
================================================================