Yes it is incorrect that we have to accept garbage service. We don't. We use
good service providers.
But that's not what I was saying. Trying to get a *customer* to change
provider doesn't work. We suggest it all the time - there are many BIG,
crap, providers in the UK, and most people use them, even though they are
obviously crap. The users won't change, however much you tell them to. I
think I could count on one hand the number of our customers who have changed
from a rubbish provider to a good one in the past 10 years. I've lost count
of the number who have gone the other way, against our recommendation,
because the new provider is 'cheaper', or it's who the MD uses at home or
something.
I've worked for several of them (the crap ones). Almost all of the
staff use a much better provider for their own services.
That's amusing.
I've also seen some of the economics involved in the support operation
of BigISP - you can easily see how much the price of the service would
have to go up in order to provide people who know something about the
internet on the end of the phones. And the customer won't pay for
that.
Another factor is how the service provider views the service. For some, usually
in the ISP space where providing basic email capabilities is an obligation,
email is a cost center, nothing more. In such coaes they'll do whatever they
can to keep costs down. And they don't care about customer retention for their
email service - in fact they'd prefer it if they would use another email
service provider.
For this sort of provider it's really all about support calls. Just having
a warm body at end of the phone line is expensive enough. Putting someone
there with anything other than a handful of scripts to read is just not
going to happen.
In fact the goal is to give service that's just good enough to keep customers
from switching to another ISP (assuming that's even a possibility), but not
good enough that they will ever bother to call in again.
And yet people still refuse to switch away from such services. Even the ones
that only offer POP, not IMAP and who force you to download all your mail.
Ned
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