Utility vs. Greed
A week or two ago, I posted about needing a wireless aircard so I could get the Internet wherever I travel. After talking to a few people, the overall consensus was to get a Verizon Aircard (ended up getting the USB720 because I have a Mac). I went out to purchase one and had to pay $167 upfront plus $59.99 (plus tax) per month service contract… for 2 years. If I was going to only get it for 1 year, it would cost $8X.XX per month… ridiculous.
Because Verizon had me up against the wall, I purchased the card and service plan and went about my merry way. It’s been about 2 full weeks now of using the wireless card, it works… just not fast. The reason I wanted to get the card was so I can escape Starbucks (I have their T-Mobile pass) and go and work in virtually any place that I chose, like 71 Irving, but I still find myself at Starbucks for the majority of time.
Obviously, there is a high demand from me (consumer) to purchase this card.
Going back to marketing 101:
High demand = high/raised price
Pricing and demand here are correlated. It’s like any business/corporate development professional’s dream to have leverage on a deal because you can get the best terms possible. Here, Verizon has a lot of leverage on the deal because I need their card.
When I use the card, I drive extreme utility. It’s not the fastest network in the world but it’s better than nothing. I don’t have any previous cards to benchmark it against, but it’s certainly much slower than a WiFi connection. As I sit here and write this post, I’m at 71 Irving on my MacBook utilizing my Verizon card for connectivity because there is no public WiFi.
I find myself using the card about 20% of the time that I need Internet (either I can find a WiFi spot or use Starbucks) and I’m paying $59.99+/mo for 2 years. I hardly believe that in 2 years, we’ll still be using these versions of the cards as technology changes rapidly and one major initiative in the Internet is omnipresent WiFi.
I’m stuck in a rut because I have 30 days to return the card for my money back (and to get out of the plan). I’ve probably got about 1/2 of that left… and need to figure out my game plan here.
The mobile telecommunications industry is notorious for their “plans” which lock you in for fixed periods of time. Why? Consumers hate this. It’s not like they are offering us a discount to subscribe for a full 1-2 years. Why don’t they sell you the hardware and pay as you go, or subscribe on a monthly (not yearly) plan (that’s just paid by hour/day/month). This would obviously give consumers a lot more flexibility and could even derive more revenue for these companies if consumers keep paying by the hour or day than they would if they paid on a flat-monthly fee. It’s a weird parallel to draw, but look at the video game industry. The lifetime value of a gamer is a lot more than just the initial cost of the game.
Just my 2 cents.