Rate adjustment, again
Rates are a funny thing.
We just had an experience where two communities came online at the same time. For whatever reason, the ISPs did not have advanced notice from KPUD. Orders (dozens) just started flooding in. A common theme in one of the communities was older homeowner, needs basic internet that works (not DSL or traditional satellite, not cellular hotspot). They sorted by price and picked the cheapest option on the KPUD website. We want customers that value our work. We actually enjoy helping seniors get “online and into the digital age”, we spend time setting up their equipment and answering many questions to get them off on their new path. However, imagine a job that is 24x7x365.25. Add this: If someone has a problem for more than 5 minutes any day of the year, they feel like they can call/text/email you three times in one hour and demand you drop everything else to fix them. Even when the problem was the they turned off the router and forgot to turn it back on. That is the life of an ISP. That exact scenario happened to me today. This is also why big companies like Comcast/CenturyLink have help desks with agents that must follow a script.
I am adjusting our 100mb pricing to where it needs to be to stay net revenue positive. We will be inline with the other ISPs. If you look down in my blog posts you will see me waxing on about this back in the November ‘20 / January ‘21 timeframe. I like communities having multiple ISPs in the neighborhood. By raising my prices two things will happen. First, customers that only choose by price will not be as likely to choose me. Second, the neighborhoods will be more mixed, which I believe is a good thing and part of the open access model.
Anyone who currently has service or an order for service will not be affected by this change. Someday I might get my billing act together and bring up the rates for folks on an old monthly or adjust the annuals to the new annual rate after their first year is up. That is low on my priority list. Net253 is not about extracting every ounce of revenue possible. We are trying to serve our community, in the Merriam Webster definition of “serve”.