Hating your cellular company
David Weinberger points out that most people hate their cell phone provider. I have to agree. I’ve never had a cell phone provider that I felt cared about my business or me as a customer. I also hate my gas company and my electric company. I hate most car rental companies too. Most of my anger is around various hidden charges. Like FCC recovery taxes. WTF is a FCC recovery tax? Or “Airport Recovery Tax.” My electric bill has “Renewable Energy” and “Energy Conservation” fees. If they are conserving so much energy why is my gas bill so damn high?
Abusive businesses like these suck, and when a business sucks you have few options (no options if it’s a utility company). You can either stop using the service or build a new service. This is why MVNO’s are so popular, most people hate dealing with cellular providers so much that they will take anything that is marginally better.
Martin V. once told me that he felt the telecoms in Spain were ripping people off. So he started another one (it became Spains second largest). That’s what I’m talking about.
April 27th, 2006 at 5:26 pm
Good thinking Ejovi.
These fu**** companies don’t take care of costumers. That means there are plenty of opportunities to provide better services in these sectors: energy and IT. I would include another interesting sector: healthcare. Using tech combinations within these sectors you can market very interesting, unmatched products.
April 27th, 2006 at 6:24 pm
My understanding is that the alternative to healthcare is successfully being done in some East Asia countries. I’ve seen some information about getting treated like royalty in 5 star accommodations and getting high quality healthcare. It’s referred to as Medical Tourism.
April 28th, 2006 at 4:15 am
Good point Zach,
I’m aware of this “tourism”. But you can still reduce marginal costs by including IT in this service. The future is in mixing technologies from different sectors.
April 28th, 2006 at 5:23 am
Thats why I am working on a day for 2007 in which I will try that users switch OFF their cell phone terminals worldwide as an international protest, also to let more people know about the VoIP services over the internet as much much cheaper and convenient to use!
The international protest day is coming …
April 28th, 2006 at 5:57 am
I forgot to say that when the idea came up, Martin V. loved it and made it public through his blog, so if you wanna help me with the BIG switch OFF day in the US you are very welcome, this way you can canalize your hate to cell phone providers wordlwide!
http://www.21f.org