NetNews Offline 2/NetNews Offline Volume 2.iso/news/comp/sys/amiga/misc-part1/6695

Internet Message Format | 1996-08-05 | 3.8 KB

Path: cup.portal.com!Harv
From: [e-mail] (Harv R Laser)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.misc,comp.sys.amiga.applications
Subject: Re: Ethics of joining CompuServe to DL B&P
Date: 29 Feb 1996 11:40:03 -0800
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Dave Haynie said...

>Compuserve is letting you on so you can try out their service. If
>they're not restricting you in any way during that trial period,
>you're in no way ethically required to add more limits. At least in my
>way of rekoning. There are quite a few services on CI$ that you might
>have a one-time use for. CI$ is probably counting on the occasional
>drop-in user like this to stick around beyond the trial, perhaps
>attracted by other stuff along the way. That's how they sell the
>service, and why I seem to get at least one more CI$ or AOL disc in
>the mail every week.

It's like the drug dealer who gives a kid his first hit for free.
They're _counting_ on you staying online after the first [x] free
hours. And a certain percentage of people will do exactly that.
And a lot of _busy_ people might join, use a few of the first
"free" houurs, and then totally forget they even have the
account, until they realize, a few months later, that their
credit card has been getting dinged about $10 every month since
they joined, even though they haven't been using the service.
The last time I checked, the services didn't bother to call up
zero-usage customers to ask if they wanted to close their
accounts :)

Back in the olden days, CI$ packed these "snap-paks" in just about
every modem one could buy.  At that time, they came with [x] free
hours too, but they didn't require one to punch in one's credit
card number to get TO those free hours like they do now.  Thus,
one could do something like log in, and download piles of files
for endless hours, because CI$' system was too polite (heh) to
kick off a user who was in a "Forum" downloading files.

A few years later they somehow got wise to how people were using
their "snap-paks" and changed their free-hours strategy such that
one had to punch in one's credit card number before being able to
use those free hours.

And speaking of those free disks, I was at a local bookstore
yesterday purusing the computer magazines, and those racks have
now become a literal sea of plastic baggies.  My quick tally
concluded that more computer magazines come packed in a plastic
bag with either a CI$ or AOL or GNN or Netcom disk or CD included than
those that don't.

There are some tricky tricks being played here too - many of the
plastic magazine-holding baggies say "Free disk inside!" in
big red letters.  One might be out of the store and on the way
to one's car before one realizes that the magazine you just paid
for which you thought included an actual useful disk of shareware
or something in fact included just another one of these
online service disks.

At both last November's COMDEX and this year's recent CES in
Vegas, AOL's booth had two HUGE (like 3' x 3' x 3') clear plastic
bins filled to the brim with Windows and Mac AOL disks. Probably
tens of thousands of them.  At both shows the two bins were
both full to the top at the start of the shows, and nearly empty
at the end.

I'm sure I'm not the only one who brought home a pretty good
supply of free HD floppy disks ;)



Harv                                       |  "Do you recognize the
[e-mail]                        |  Bell of Truth when you
http://www.portal.com/~harv                |  hear it ring?"
[e-mail] <--- Newton mail only!   |  - Leon Russell