Transparency and Building a Brand

[jakebamat]

Dear Sonic,

I'll admit, shame on me for not reading every single word of the contract, looking for subtext and footnotes, and asking all the questions from A-Z. I should have been more thorough.

$40/month is an outright lie and an extremely dishonest way to begin a relationship with a new customer. Granted, you offer better service at a better price than Comcast, but it's definitely not $40/month. Here are some of the things I've discovered in my first month of service...

1. Phone fees - despite me not wanting to use the phone line, there is no way for me to avoid the monthly fees. Awesome. Let's add a bit to my bill shall we?
2. Modem rental fee - I assumed this would be the case just like Comcast. Yep. $10/month for that. What's that? You want to use your own modem? Oh, that's a $10 return shipping fee, and we will charge you $75 for any servicing that requires us to come to your residence now. Great. I burden extra charges just for wanting to use my own equipment.

You guys had me. You are better than Comcast. I was excited. And although my service is better, you now have a frustrated and skeptical customer instead of a brand advocate. JUST BE TRANSPARENT! Tell people it's closer to $60 all in for service, rental equipment and fees, and you would still win people over from competing providers as you are still a better deal.

Why?! Why not just clearly state your fees and charges? I don't understand. Do you think hiding charges from customers in subtext and contracts just so you can advertise a lower price is a good business strategy? I see a size 1000 font advertising $40/month on all your vans, but funny how I don't see the other fees that raise your monthly bill closer to $60/month.

Disappointing. I'll still be recommending Sonic to friends and family, but below are two examples of how those conversations could go:

(The conversation I could have been having) Sonic is awesome. I highly recommend them. They are worlds above and beyond anything Comcast provides. The gigabit internet is 4 times faster than Comcast and it's cheaper. Their customer service is amazing. I highly recommend them. Switch now!

(The conversation I will be having instead) Sonic is good. They practice some pretty shady business processes (hidden fees, lack of transparency) just like Comcast. But their service is faster at a lower cost. So I guess the lesser of two evils, right?

Sincerely,
A connected, but head shaking customer

[guest]

Well, you are mad because you did not read the terms. I do not know how that is Sonic's fault. They do spell all this out before you sign up. If you choose not to read it, it is not Sonic's fault.

[Guest]

$40/month is an outright lie and an extremely dishonest way to begin a relationship with a new customer.

Dane has talked about the rationale behind Sonic's decision to quote just service cost several times on this forum. When every other ISP does this, do you think Sonic is at an advantage if they go against the status-quo? I'm pretty sure if Comcast or AT&T quotes $30/month there will be many who subscribe and deal with the fallout afterward. People who are informed know what they're getting and your post showed you were not informed when you pulled the trigger.

How did you subscribe to the service? Did you go to the pre-qualification page? If you had, did you notice there is a total cost that is shown for cost? And if you clicked on the ? next to Total, you would have been shown the taxes and fees that apply based on your city of residence. I don't think AT&T or Comcast even show you this information before you subscribe.

There are a few things I wish Sonic would do differently but they are quite honest about what you're getting. The one thing that is sneaky in my opinion is when the prequal page offers X2 when you can call/ask the rep to subscribe to X1 instead.

[mike.perlas]

Thank you very much for the feedback. We absolutely care about our image and branding. Specifically - we try our best to be an industry standard for transparency. As mentioned above, all that information is publicly accessible and disclaimed upon sign up. However, we are always working towards improving areas where we fall short.

The struggle is that taxes vary from city to city. Meanwhile fees are also determined by which service you sign up for. The only static price point is our service, which starts at $40 ($60 for X2 services).

[bubba198]

That was a well though-out memo Jake; I do expect transparency in principle while at the same time I've come to expect everyone to "lie" to some extend so I scour the forums for true and credible information straight from the horse's mouth before I pull the trigger on an order. I think Sonic is trying hard to enter into a business with high barriers to entry. Even then I'm surprised to find the kind of lack of flexibility everyone loves about going with a small shop. It seems their financiers have them by the throat and don't allow any exceptions or customer deviation from the hard line they want them to follow for who knows what future deal, a purchase, acquisition, etc... yep I do rant about the voice thing but trolling no more. I share your ideas!