Comment by inigyou
14 days ago
You should switch to whatever is cheapest right now. If it gets more expensive, you should switch to whatever is cheapest right then. That's the market price signal that drives the good parts of capitalism.
14 days ago
You should switch to whatever is cheapest right now. If it gets more expensive, you should switch to whatever is cheapest right then. That's the market price signal that drives the good parts of capitalism.
This is based on the assumption that switching between operators/providers is quick and straight-forward. The reality of switching is that it is extremely time-consuming and emotionally-draining. These corporate practices should not be a thing, but the providers know that this hurts their profit-margins, so they "choose" to make very difficult.
that's one way of doing the calculation, which I do not subscribe to. The economic theory that markets develop according to the aggregate effects of rational actors does not invert into a moral imperative to you should do what money tells you. In fact it has no bearing on what one "should" do whatsoever.
As it happens they are competing on service quality and goodwill more than price (all will drop the price quite a bit if you ask because it's well over their costs and, bless, they are actually competing on price for once). I know that fiber's service is technically good but I resent Google enough that I will not give them money, all else being equal. Of course if I end up resenting the other providers more, maybe I would.
Verizon will only lower prices if it's losing customers to Google Fiber. Otherwise it won't.
There are 4-5 competing ISPs in my area.
And no, they'll lower prices to prevent losing customers preemptively as well. But only if you ask them to