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This is exactly what I mean. Unlimited meant that there were no preset limits to the number of hours you were allowed to use, and there was no surcharge for ho

by sbarre 15y ago

This is exactly what I mean. Unlimited meant that there were no preset limits to the number of hours you were allowed to use, and there was no surcharge for hours used. It did _not_ mean that you were _guaranteed_ to be allowed access 24/7 all month long. I think that's a fair definition of "unlimited". We were very clear about this, and said so in our ad fine print, and very prominently during the sign-up process.

mikeash 15y ago
"Preset" is a red herring, limits are contrary to "unlimited" whether they're set in advance or decided on the fly. Certainly there's no guaranteed access, but if you're artificially limiting their access, as opposed to just having equipment difficulties or whatever, then that's hardly unlimited. If you're kicking off heavy users, I think that's not at all a fair definition of unlimited. I appreciate that you were up front about the policy and think that's exactly what you should be doing, but disagree with characterizing this as somehow compatible with "unlimited". If "unlimited" is allowed to have these limits, then what exactly does it mean?
- sbarre 15y ago
  You are free to interpret the word in your own way I guess, but I don't think our definition was unfair or inaccurate. I think you are confusing "unlimited" with "infinite". By your argument, one could say that we didn't offer "unlimited" service because there are a maximum of 744 hours in a month and hey that's not equal to "unlimited". Again this comes back to different valid interpretations of a word, and since we provided the service, ours won. Try going to McDonalds and each time you're there arguing that their "large" fries don't meet your definition of "large". Maybe bring a "large" garbage bag and say "THIS is what large means" and ask them to fill that up, and see how far you get. Anyways, you aren't making any new arguments that customers didn't give me 15 years ago..
  - mikeash 15y ago
    I don't think your 744 hours argument makes sense. That's not your limit. Interpret it as "all you can eat"; if I can't eat anymore, that's not really a limit with the service. Again, I don't see how your interpretation is a valid one. You limit the service based on usage. This is not "unlimited". If your cut the service off after one hour per month, would that be unlimited? I imagine you wouldn't consider it to be so. So what's the difference, aside from degree? I don't imagine I'm putting forth new arguments. But I still don't understand: why call it "unlimited" when it's not? It seems clear enough that people don't expect your definition of the word when they see it, and haven't for at least 15 years, so why keep using it when it's known to be misleading?
    - sbarre 15y ago
      First: Marketing. We had to sell accounts and you can't really fit a big complicated explanation in an advert, nor would you want to. Second: We were fair. Compared to our competition we offered a damn good service. You're right, cutting someone off after an hour would be shitty, but we had very few customers who didn't end up using more or less as many hours as they wanted to (back to the buffet example).. We had a well-tuned system that calculated a rolling total of your connected time over the last 7 days and ONLY if you exceeded a specific threshold (if no one exceeded it, no one got disconnected), and ONLY during peak times (5pm to 10pm weeknights), and ONLY if all the lines were in use, would we selectively disconnect high-usage customers to make space for others. If there was the odd high-usage customer (it was about 5% of our unlimited accounts at most) that couldn't get online between 5pm and 10pm on weeknights here and there because we were limiting their access to allow other customers on, BUT they can hop back on at 10pm and stay connected until 5pm the NEXT DAY, I think we were offering a pretty good deal. So like your buffet example, the majority of our customers had no problem with our unlimited service, and the very few outliers who got limited, well they were getting a good deal anyways, and at the end of the day were actually costing us money, so if they cancelled as dissatisfied customers for not being able to essentially have a dedicated dial-up phone line for under 25$/month, we didn't lose any sleep over it. So in the end, it was effectively unlimited service for 95%+ of our customers, and near-unlimited for the rest.
      - 15y ago

by sbarre 15y ago

mikeash 15y ago

"Preset" is a red herring, limits are contrary to "unlimited" whether they're set in advance or decided on the fly. Certainly there's no guaranteed access, but if you're artificially limiting their access, as opposed to just having equipment difficulties or whatever, then that's hardly unlimited. If you're kicking off heavy users, I think that's not at all a fair definition of unlimited. I appreciate that you were up front about the policy and think that's exactly what you should be doing, but disagree with characterizing this as somehow compatible with "unlimited". If "unlimited" is allowed to have these limits, then what exactly does it mean?

sbarre 15y ago
You are free to interpret the word in your own way I guess, but I don't think our definition was unfair or inaccurate. I think you are confusing "unlimited" with "infinite". By your argument, one could say that we didn't offer "unlimited" service because there are a maximum of 744 hours in a month and hey that's not equal to "unlimited". Again this comes back to different valid interpretations of a word, and since we provided the service, ours won. Try going to McDonalds and each time you're there arguing that their "large" fries don't meet your definition of "large". Maybe bring a "large" garbage bag and say "THIS is what large means" and ask them to fill that up, and see how far you get. Anyways, you aren't making any new arguments that customers didn't give me 15 years ago..
- mikeash 15y ago
  I don't think your 744 hours argument makes sense. That's not your limit. Interpret it as "all you can eat"; if I can't eat anymore, that's not really a limit with the service. Again, I don't see how your interpretation is a valid one. You limit the service based on usage. This is not "unlimited". If your cut the service off after one hour per month, would that be unlimited? I imagine you wouldn't consider it to be so. So what's the difference, aside from degree? I don't imagine I'm putting forth new arguments. But I still don't understand: why call it "unlimited" when it's not? It seems clear enough that people don't expect your definition of the word when they see it, and haven't for at least 15 years, so why keep using it when it's known to be misleading?
  - sbarre 15y ago
    First: Marketing. We had to sell accounts and you can't really fit a big complicated explanation in an advert, nor would you want to. Second: We were fair. Compared to our competition we offered a damn good service. You're right, cutting someone off after an hour would be shitty, but we had very few customers who didn't end up using more or less as many hours as they wanted to (back to the buffet example).. We had a well-tuned system that calculated a rolling total of your connected time over the last 7 days and ONLY if you exceeded a specific threshold (if no one exceeded it, no one got disconnected), and ONLY during peak times (5pm to 10pm weeknights), and ONLY if all the lines were in use, would we selectively disconnect high-usage customers to make space for others. If there was the odd high-usage customer (it was about 5% of our unlimited accounts at most) that couldn't get online between 5pm and 10pm on weeknights here and there because we were limiting their access to allow other customers on, BUT they can hop back on at 10pm and stay connected until 5pm the NEXT DAY, I think we were offering a pretty good deal. So like your buffet example, the majority of our customers had no problem with our unlimited service, and the very few outliers who got limited, well they were getting a good deal anyways, and at the end of the day were actually costing us money, so if they cancelled as dissatisfied customers for not being able to essentially have a dedicated dial-up phone line for under 25$/month, we didn't lose any sleep over it. So in the end, it was effectively unlimited service for 95%+ of our customers, and near-unlimited for the rest.
    - 15y ago