Path: utzoo!utgpu!watmath!clyde!att!osu-cis!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!mailrus!sharkey!atanasoff!jwright
From: jwright@atanasoff.cs.iastate.edu (Jim Wright)
Newsgroups: comp.dcom.modems
Subject: Re: FYI -- PC-P Price "Increase"
Message-ID: <580@atanasoff.cs.iastate.edu>
Date: 3 Jan 89 00:26:20 GMT
References: <8901012214.AA25093@amon-re.cs.odu.edu> <437@marob.MASA.COM>
Reply-To: jwright@atanasoff.cs.iastate.edu (Jim Wright)
Organization: Iowa State U. Computer Science Department, Ames, IA
Lines: 31

In article <437@marob.MASA.COM> cabreu@marob.masa.com (Carlos Cabreu) writes:
>Well, years ago when TELENET introduced its PC-Pursuit product they were
>looking to make money during the off-peak hours when their network was almost
>completely idle.  I don't believe that they ever expected it to turn into
>the behemoth-brute-thing it is now.  Even with all their market saavy,
>they could never have anticipated it; Telenet would have never introduced the
>product in the first place.

>No, they're not idiots, but they don't have a crystal ball either.

>At the risk of sounding like a devil's advocate (since I use PC-Pursuit
>a lot), they're correcting an oversight of theirs and I'm surprised they
>didn't do something about it earlier.

"Correcting an oversight" is a very, uh, POLITE way of putting it.

If this was really getting out of hand, why did they add 2400bps?
If this was really getting out of hand, why did they add more cities?
If this was really getting out of hand, why did they put the Net
Exchange on a Sun?

If this was just a sideline as some people infer, then why upgrade
everything?  They kept adding features, promising to unbreak the
broken file transfers, etc. etc.  If all they wanted was to get a
little extra income out of unused lines, then why didn't they just
say, "Hey folks, here it is.  For 25 bucks, take it or leave it."
Busy lines would have made the service self-regulating.

Instead they kept adding features.  And adding customers.  Can you
say "Bait and switch"?  I can just see the marketing guys up on
the 25th floor with smiles from ear to ear.