Woosh's new 'Activation Fees' which replace modem buying!

Forums › New Zealand Broadband › Woosh's new 'Activation Fees' which replace modem buying!

paradoxsm

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#5141 1-Oct-2005 22:48

In a really stupid and bad move for woosh, as of 8th Sept, The subsidised price of the 12 month contract modem at $99 has become an "activation fee" where the modem/gateway belongs to Woosh. The $199 outright purchase has been removed, replaced with a $199 activation fee.. and yes the $99 early termination fee is still there!
There is a positive, The modems will now be replaced whenever they go faulty free of charge.

This is kinda transparent to new customers but a real nasty blow to deal their existing customers.

Worst blow comes to anyone who buys their modem secondhand off Auction, after paying the seller for it, you will still be hit with $99 (or $199) ARGH! or you can return it to woosh and the'll give you a $20 DSE voucher,,, woohoo!!!!!! not.

Basically, an "activation fee" get's you jack, no modem, nothing to keep, Just $100 bucks nowhere if you decide to cancel or it does not work properly. You can't open the modem, modify the gateway or do any other changes.

They said they are "following SkyTV's model" which is a ridiculous "me too" attitude.

So now whilst you can connect to Xtra, Slingshot iHug etc, for nothing and get the modem free,, it's now $99 to join woosh even if you supply our own hardware! or $199 if you don't want a contract!

They do have a $5 a month suspend plan which I highly suggest for anyone who looks to leave it for a few months.

:-) Good news however, It's now much cheaper to get hold (hireage) of the PC card.

Hardware prices.. (don't quote these as gospel)

Modem $199
PC card $299
Phone gateway $199

sbiddle

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#20899 2-Oct-2005 09:31

Any idea how much the modems do actually cost them? You can either assume they were not recouping the cost of the modem or simply see this as a money making exercise.

It's almost as bad as TelstraClear who still won't sell you cable modems that are only worth around US$70 retail instead they'll suck $10.95 per month off you for rental..:-(
I know they did have good reasons for doing this initially (to stop people trying to hook up imported modems as they had the potential to crash the whole network) but the surfboards are so cheap it's hardly an issue any longer.

paradoxsm

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#20908 2-Oct-2005 12:04

The modems cost $300-400 dollars in the early days, though they would not give me a figure and I assume this would have dropped with the more modems they make... I wanted to "lose" my gateway and pay it outright (So I could chop it) but they are quiet on the subject.

It's a money making exercise and a whole "Me Too" atttitude they seem to be taking. (like the plan changes copying Slingshots)

Customers WONT switch if it involves "connection fee's", there' nothing in it for them, there is no alternative to SKY (apart from HVC+) ;-) so people will pay it, but when the alternatives are FREE (DSL) them people will go with the cheaper options!

X_Boxer1

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#22321 31-Oct-2005 04:42

This post mostly relates to paradoxsm comments and a few others.

Yes i agree its a capitalistic business move you know why? Because those modems cost them 1599.00 for 20 shipments, how do I know this you say, Look at their heirachy or did i mean anarchy of staff from Top to the begining of customer service rep's, they are all ex post ceo's or media giant people etc. Still ok, I got the info directly from an audio conversation via an elevator telephone. No im not lying. Secondly Woosh formerly Walker Wireless Ltd. had some very funny business going on (I will not say what or else Ill be in court) about the same time Bellsouth suddenly became Vodafone and you all know Slingshot, Ihug and Kiwi connect are sub companies of telecom, not just for line ownership but are set up by shareholders and power decision makers and so forth. Furthermore the activation fee's are for people going over cap and still going hard with downloading even with dial up remaining in place to cap recharge period, also funny how their budget doesnt look good for end of year fiscal, why did they do the rip off around the same time as the wireless phone service? guess!

You got to face it skytv is bed buddies with xtra/telecom and vodafone will one day merge woosh, e.g marketing, audience targets, preferred clientele and the rest of it. As for HVC+ well i love it, the day telecom drew up their so called 'plan of the future' (i hope gary ten dollar text guy aint leading this plan) to commence partners in action formerly the skytv+telecom bill in one plus discount if used mecury energy, it was one bill but they used it for marketing and other statistics of households.

Last but not least TelstraClear run cable servers themselves haha, no T series stuff there!

sbiddle

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#22322 31-Oct-2005 06:51

X_Boxer1: you all know Slingshot, Ihug and Kiwi connect are sub companies of telecom, not just for line ownership but are set up by shareholders and power decision makers and so forth.

I'm sure it would come as a surprise to Annette Presley that Telecom supposedly owns her company..

X_Boxer1

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#22330 31-Oct-2005 11:12

Yes I know Anette (however the spelling is) is owner but remembering one key fact,
Telecom own all lines, there phone (Slingshot/Ihug) only is toll savings. I found this out from personal experience when I requested all information under the information act as I was formely a customer of all them. They said 'We are not a entity of Telecom, however all property rights of any such services remain the ownership, our products are created by our own company'. I got someone in the legal dept. to elloborate this as to: Telecom control services when extending out to branches of the majority telcom zones of the nation, Products that other companies offer are of course individual -so dial up IHug is owned by Ihug but all servers at the end of the day link into the biggest mesh network 'The world wide web'. Thus all controls in final are by the discretion or authority of Telecom. Why do you think Don Brash wanted enterprise dealt completly different.

So skipping all jargon, Ihug/Slingshot own any systems/dial up or broadband services but not 100% as all networking outside the companys server go to Telecom. Where as TelstraClear have a direct fibre-optic feed into Australia, based from heavy industry server running on cable implementation. I had to do an official reporting study on these last year which is also where I found out other such info.

Its like watching that movie 'The Village', an internal framework set in place but comes from the greater power, in this case Telecom NZ.

freitasm

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#22334 31-Oct-2005 11:30

And what's this got to do with Woosh? I am locking this post.