I can increase my cellphone plan with the click of a button.
If I want to decrease it that same button redirects to a live chat where I have to talk to one of their agents.
Their agents will genuinely give you a better deal, but for some reason can’t change your plan to a lesser one without breaking your contract, causing hundreds of dollars in extra fees.
The brick and mortar agents can do it in 2 minutes with no hassle. You walk in and say I want this plan, show your id, sign the change request and you’re done.
I don’t even think they are doing it on purpose. Why would they have a button that connects me to someone they are paying to convince me to give them less money per month? They cut my wife’s bill in half because she is month to month.
Besides, the limit of bandwidth is almost entirely artificial. Yeah, it costs some amount of money to send, say, 500 SMS messages, serve 1 GB of data, or process a 5 minute phone call. But not nearly as much as you’re paying and it’s not like they pay per SMS/GB/minute, once the infrastructure is there they pay a fairly flat amount to keep each service area running (until it’s time to upgrade but depending on where you are, that might even be publicly subsidized). So, whether you’re allowed 10 GB or 20 GB per month makes barely a dent on their cost, but getting you to pay $15 for 20 instead of $10 for 10 when $20 for 20 already isn’t an option is really good for their bottom line.
I can increase my cellphone plan with the click of a button.
If I want to decrease it that same button redirects to a live chat where I have to talk to one of their agents.
Their agents will genuinely give you a better deal, but for some reason can’t change your plan to a lesser one without breaking your contract, causing hundreds of dollars in extra fees.
The brick and mortar agents can do it in 2 minutes with no hassle. You walk in and say I want this plan, show your id, sign the change request and you’re done.
I don’t even think they are doing it on purpose. Why would they have a button that connects me to someone they are paying to convince me to give them less money per month? They cut my wife’s bill in half because she is month to month.
It’s just Hanlons Razor. Supreme incompetence.
But it’s not Hanlon’s Razor, it is absolutely malicious. They want to make the process complicated and frustrating so you give up.
Besides, the limit of bandwidth is almost entirely artificial. Yeah, it costs some amount of money to send, say, 500 SMS messages, serve 1 GB of data, or process a 5 minute phone call. But not nearly as much as you’re paying and it’s not like they pay per SMS/GB/minute, once the infrastructure is there they pay a fairly flat amount to keep each service area running (until it’s time to upgrade but depending on where you are, that might even be publicly subsidized). So, whether you’re allowed 10 GB or 20 GB per month makes barely a dent on their cost, but getting you to pay $15 for 20 instead of $10 for 10 when $20 for 20 already isn’t an option is really good for their bottom line.