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From: hshaw@Neon.Stanford.EDU (Hubert Shaw)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc.misc
Subject: Re: Prodigy - Conversations with Fred
Message-ID: <1990Nov25.211746.8111@Neon.Stanford.EDU>
Date: 25 Nov 90 21:17:46 GMT
References: <3493@ryn.esg.dec.com> <90328.104900F0O@psuvm.psu.edu>
Organization: Computer Science Department, Stanford University
Lines: 38

F0O@psuvm.psu.edu writes:

>In article <3493@ryn.esg.dec.com>, reisert@ricks.enet.dec.com (Jim Reisert)
>says:


>>    Rothman is one of those alleged compu-terrorists Prodigy claims is
>>    harassing other users and companies that advertise on the service by
>>    sending out thousands upon thousands of increasingly hostile
>>    messages in protest of a Prodigy plan to begin charging users who
>>    send more than 30 e-mail messages a month. Rothman and the others
>>    say they sent very polite messages to people (Penny Hay of Los
>>    Angeles says her messages were even approved by the Prodigy legal
>>    department) telling them about the new fees and urging them to
>>    protest.

>     Why would he want to protest?  I've heard they want to charge $0.10
>    for every email message over 30 a month.  What's wrong with this?
>    Think about it, you're only paying ten something *a month* to use
>    their service; Compuserve is $12 an hour!  Another way of looking
>    at it is the $12/hr breaks down to $0.10 every 30 seconds.  So,
>    even if you left Prodigy, where could you go to get a better deal?
>    I think all these people are making a big fuss over nothing.


There is an error here.  The charge is $.25 per email after the 30 free
per month.

Why protest?  Another thing not mentioned is that email is limited to 4
Prodigy pages, which is equivalent to about ONE typed page.  To write
a reasonably sized letter would require that it be broken up into >1
email letters.  This would make the price of one email letter >=$.50
instead of $.25.  One can easily see how this can become exhorbitant.


Hubert Shaw
Stanford University
inet: hshaw@neon.stanford.edu