4 ms·

It may also be analogous in that the game is rigged. Off-brand K-cups seem to sell for around $1.50-$1.70 each in a quick search. Official K-cups seem to sell

by skuhn 12y ago

It may also be analogous in that the game is rigged. Off-brand K-cups seem to sell for around $1.50-$1.70 each in a quick search. Official K-cups seem to sell for around $1.50-$1.80 each. Obviously there may be a non-price advantage to buying off-brand cups, but it's clear that they know who they are competing against. A 5lb bag of coffee from somewhere fancy is also between $1.60-$1.70 per cup. Coincidence? Likewise, my post-paid phone bill is $60/mo and I buy a phone every so often for $199 subsidized. $1670 over the course of the two year contract. If I switch to a pre-paid plan, it's still $60/mo (for less) and the phone is now $599, for a total of $2040. Other carriers are in the same range ($50-80), most offer substantially less for that money, and basically everyone operates right around in the same price region +/- a few hundred dollars over two years. It may be that they're all running their businesses perfectly optimized and this is what it costs to provide cell phone service and make a profit. I'm more inclined to think that this is the cost that the market will bear, and the minor variations that exist in service prices simply serve to keep a minority of the customers churning through the market in search of a better deal that doesn't exist in any significant sense.

Zak 12y ago
It doesn't include much talk time, but T-Mobile has a $30 prepaid plan that's definitely a better deal for data-heavy users than their (or anybody else's) postpaid plans. My Nexus 5 cost me $350 and was competitive with other flagship phones available at the time. Over 2 years, I pay $1070, assuming I buy a new $350 phone every 2 years. I might stretch the Nexus 5 to 3 years. If a specific phone that costs $600 is important to you, you'd pay $1320. The plan is light on airtime: 100 minutes with additional time for 9 cents per minute, but Google Hangouts can dial US phone numbers free of charge now. So you can save a lot if you skip the subsitdy and fit a specific usage pattern.
- skuhn 12y ago
  It's true, if you make certain compromises, you can save some money. In this case, $350 over 2 years isn't worth it to me, it would have to be some serious dough to get me to watch my minutes like a hawk. It is 2014 after all, and I have no desire to return to the days of paying for things per minute. I feel like it's less that it costs T-Mo $30 to handle that amount of voice / data usage than that they have determined the market can bear $30 for cell phone service so that's what the price is. Which is what they should be doing to maximize their profit, but I think that's the source of why there is so little differentiation between carriers -- if there was real competition, we would be paying a lot less.
- mblakele 12y ago
  Is this it? http://prepaid-phones.t-mobile.com/prepaid-monthly-plans http://prepaid-phones.t-mobile.com/prepaid-monthly-plans "$30 per month — Unlimited web and text with 100 minutes talk... First 5GB at up to 4G speeds... This plan is only available for devices purchased from Wal-Mart or devices activated on T-Mobile.com". That sounds good, except that I recently tried to activate a new, unlocked iPhone on t-mobile.com — and it didn't go well at all. The web site simply couldn't do it. Neither could the phone reps. It took a trip to a B&M store before I could get the phone activated, even though it came from Apple with a t-mobile SIM card already installed. So this $30 plan may not be a practical option if you want a specific phone. That said I am pretty happy with t-mobile so far, using a post-paid plan. Connectivity has been better than I expected. International roaming was an amazing value on my last trip, but that might not be available on the $30 plan either.
  - mikeash 12y ago
    The $30 plan is an odd duck. They clearly don't want it to be too visible. I guess it's an attempt at market segmentation. People who aren't willing to go out of their way to track it down will go for a more expensive plan instead. But I think it's available to anything that'll take a SIM card if you can jump through all the hoops and twist the right arms.
    - Zak 12y ago
      It's not difficult to get in my experience using it myself and recommending it to two international visitors. They just don't market it, so people only learn about it through word of mouth.
  - Zak 12y ago
    I helped a friend activate the $30 plan on an iPhone. There were no issues aside from the activation website having display issues on mobile browsers that made filling out the forms impossible. Odd that a mobile provider wouldn't put more effort in to that. It may be that the preinstalled SIM only works with postpaid plans, as they do seem to separate the two business models quite a bit (separate websites and such). International data roaming is not available on the prepaid plans, but swapping in a local SIM can be a good option for some use cases.
zanny 12y ago
I'm using Freedompop, which is a Sprint MVNO, besides the upfront costs being pretty on par with aftermarket devices sales (I have their Galaxy S4, cost $350) their monthly rates go from free, which I'm currently on, to $20 a month for unlimited talk / text / 3g data, which my mother uses. In any case that beats major carriers in a matter of months. The same could be said of a lot of the Sprint MVNOs - Ting and Republic Wireless are also hyper aggressive price wise and always come out ahead of the major carriers in a matter of months (except T-Mobile, especially if you need a lot of data).

by skuhn 12y ago

Zak 12y ago

It doesn't include much talk time, but T-Mobile has a $30 prepaid plan that's definitely a better deal for data-heavy users than their (or anybody else's) postpaid plans. My Nexus 5 cost me $350 and was competitive with other flagship phones available at the time. Over 2 years, I pay $1070, assuming I buy a new $350 phone every 2 years. I might stretch the Nexus 5 to 3 years. If a specific phone that costs $600 is important to you, you'd pay $1320. The plan is light on airtime: 100 minutes with additional time for 9 cents per minute, but Google Hangouts can dial US phone numbers free of charge now. So you can save a lot if you skip the subsitdy and fit a specific usage pattern.

skuhn 12y ago
It's true, if you make certain compromises, you can save some money. In this case, $350 over 2 years isn't worth it to me, it would have to be some serious dough to get me to watch my minutes like a hawk. It is 2014 after all, and I have no desire to return to the days of paying for things per minute. I feel like it's less that it costs T-Mo $30 to handle that amount of voice / data usage than that they have determined the market can bear $30 for cell phone service so that's what the price is. Which is what they should be doing to maximize their profit, but I think that's the source of why there is so little differentiation between carriers -- if there was real competition, we would be paying a lot less.
mblakele 12y ago
Is this it? http://prepaid-phones.t-mobile.com/prepaid-monthly-plans http://prepaid-phones.t-mobile.com/prepaid-monthly-plans "$30 per month — Unlimited web and text with 100 minutes talk... First 5GB at up to 4G speeds... This plan is only available for devices purchased from Wal-Mart or devices activated on T-Mobile.com". That sounds good, except that I recently tried to activate a new, unlocked iPhone on t-mobile.com — and it didn't go well at all. The web site simply couldn't do it. Neither could the phone reps. It took a trip to a B&M store before I could get the phone activated, even though it came from Apple with a t-mobile SIM card already installed. So this $30 plan may not be a practical option if you want a specific phone. That said I am pretty happy with t-mobile so far, using a post-paid plan. Connectivity has been better than I expected. International roaming was an amazing value on my last trip, but that might not be available on the $30 plan either.
- mikeash 12y ago
  The $30 plan is an odd duck. They clearly don't want it to be too visible. I guess it's an attempt at market segmentation. People who aren't willing to go out of their way to track it down will go for a more expensive plan instead. But I think it's available to anything that'll take a SIM card if you can jump through all the hoops and twist the right arms.
  - Zak 12y ago
    It's not difficult to get in my experience using it myself and recommending it to two international visitors. They just don't market it, so people only learn about it through word of mouth.
- Zak 12y ago
  I helped a friend activate the $30 plan on an iPhone. There were no issues aside from the activation website having display issues on mobile browsers that made filling out the forms impossible. Odd that a mobile provider wouldn't put more effort in to that. It may be that the preinstalled SIM only works with postpaid plans, as they do seem to separate the two business models quite a bit (separate websites and such). International data roaming is not available on the prepaid plans, but swapping in a local SIM can be a good option for some use cases.

zanny 12y ago

I'm using Freedompop, which is a Sprint MVNO, besides the upfront costs being pretty on par with aftermarket devices sales (I have their Galaxy S4, cost $350) their monthly rates go from free, which I'm currently on, to $20 a month for unlimited talk / text / 3g data, which my mother uses. In any case that beats major carriers in a matter of months. The same could be said of a lot of the Sprint MVNOs - Ting and Republic Wireless are also hyper aggressive price wise and always come out ahead of the major carriers in a matter of months (except T-Mobile, especially if you need a lot of data).