Member Pricing

General discussions and other topics.
5 posts Page 1 of 1
by cfhansen » Sat Apr 14, 2018 9:06 am
Dane - I was on the line with Sonic the other day. I have been with you all *forever* and found out I am capped at 20Mbps and paying $50 per month. When I asked what it would cost for me to increase my speeds, they said that I would have go to up to $60 per month and pay for a new line install. I clarified that a new sonic customer (once out of the year promo period) would pay $40 per month and I would pay $60 per month and they said yes. I even said I would pay for the truck roll for the new line, but felt like it wasn't awesome for a loyal customer to end up paying $20 more per month for the same speeds. They said they would have someone call me this past week - didn't get a call. They also said, post and email our CEO, so here I am!
by ngufra » Tue Apr 17, 2018 9:30 am
If you get 20 MBps, i suspect you are on VDSL and are fairly close to the DSLAM. To increase speed you would need to get a second VDSL bonded to the first one which would double your speed. The second VDSL line is $20 extra.
It would also double your upstream from probably around 6 to 12 Mbps up.

Usually, there are already typically 2 lines coming to your house so no additional work outside your house would be needed.

I don't think new customers would pay less than you would (after the 1 year)

Sonic has to play the game of intro rates to compare favorably with other ISP. I guess one could compare that cost with advertising except that it costs customers less instead of making someone else richer.

Existing customers should not look at price difference between new and existing customers, you should look at the value you get out of it, and is it worth it to you.

The benefit of the 2nd bonded line for DSL may not be obvious unless you have a large household and everyone is online at the same time downloading large amount of data. 20 Mbps is a lot already.

People on ADSL2+ pay the same rate and only get 3 or 6 Mbps, people on fiber also pay the same rate.
Do you know when is fiber going to be available where you live?

Also: are you using sonic's modem or your own? will it support the bonded lines? Will rental of the 2 line modem be the same price? i think it used to be $6.50 vs $10. I have always used my own modem so i cannot confirm. Using your own modem could be a way to reduce your bill if you know what you are doing.

Sonic should have called you when they said they would though.

-Francois
by macmarcule » Tue May 22, 2018 9:54 am
ngufra wrote: Existing customers should not look at price difference between new and existing customers, you should look at the value you get out of it, and is it worth it to you.
-Francois
This isn't just a question of whether the higher price might still be worth it. It's about what the policy says about the company. When a provider offers better deals to new customers than it does to existing loyal customers, it is a good indication of the corporate culture and the attitude the company has towards it's existing customers. It is a culture that is geared towards getting as many new customers as possible, while considering existing customers as locked in and so not worth bothering to maintain. Basically they're saying "now that we've got you as a customer, stop bothering us, because we can't be bothered by you." Comcast operates the same way, so I'm not saying Sonic is any worse than they are. But that is an incredibly LOW bar and I'd have hoped that Sonic would do better.
by ngufra » Tue May 22, 2018 11:31 am
I agree that as a customer you feel it's wrong that new customers are treated better than existing customer.
Sonic used to not have intro pricing but they had to do this to compete better with the larger ISP.
i think it was about the time when they went from $40 to $50 that it was introduced.

I guess I'd rather they give new customer $10 off for a year than if they spend that money on advertising on TV, etc instead.
[they may do TV advertising but i don't watch TV so i wouldn't know]
Word of mouth should be enough but to get momentum and make economy of scale they need more customers.
[Hence the plug to get referral program back; it seems to have stalled]

Note that they do not have a "retention department" that will give you again a promo pricing when you complain.
So you can complain as much as you want, you won't get $10 off.
So you don't need to worry someone else who spends the effort to call gets a lower price.

I use my own equipment and pay $50 + $10 in fees, so about $60 total per month and am happy.
by miken » Thu May 24, 2018 8:45 am
We offer an uncapped line going as fast as we can provide. In the instances where we can add a second line and bond them together to increase performance, there is a price increase because the second line has a monthly cost attached to providing it and it would not be feasible to provide that for free.

That being said, your line is getting a full 20/1 and I don't see any saturation on the line. Your post doesn't mention if you are seeing any performance issues, but if you are it may be between the modem and your devices and not the bandwidth on your line. We don't have a lot of visibility as it looks like you are using a third party router.

Are you connected via wireless? Can you try and connect through Ethernet? Does the problem still occur? What does a speedtest say when connected via Ethernet as opposed to wireless?
Mike N.
Development Trainer
Sonic
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