In reply to a post by zebedeee:

If you guys took some time to read AAISP's web pages, and actually listened to their established customers, you might learn that Andrews & Arnold have one of the best and fairest usage policies out there.

Hey!

Step back and re-read the whole thread. All I'm doing is trying to help get more customers for AAISP. I have not criticised anything and I don't think Kevin has either.

I have been recommending the old packages for months for precisely the reasons you now post.

!kcits eht fo dne gnorw eht pu dekcip evah uoY

I think that you make a very good point regarding a simpler 'standard packages' for very many everyday non-techys like me..

I don't understand a lot of the package stuff, just check my usage level daily, reading these forums on TBB and some posters insistence on an isp with 'unlimited' I think A&A should make very clear that customers do get a monitor of usage on a control panel, it seems that I have overestimated the bandwidth that I thought I used

also am now unclear as to which packages allow domain hosting as previously I think you had to pay for a 4gb/100gb level, there again I probably have got that wrong as well.!!

The 'selling point' for me with AAISP apart from their reputation plus monthly contract was the excellent support staff who once they began to understand that I needed simpler explanations were fantastic and of course UK based with that irc stuff, not just a queue to a call centre.

oh and best of all the best speed on my line I have ever had with good throughput, on 20CN using BT copper
BT test at 7.10pm which I think speaks for itself
Download speedachieved during the test was - 4283 Kbps
Your DSL Connection Rate :5984 Kbps(DOWN-STREAM), 448 Kbps(UP-STREAM)
IP Profile for your line is - 5000 Kbps

Edited by deleted (Tue 22-Dec-09 19:16:37)

you guys are assuming aaisp wants to be come just 'another' mass market isp.

they seem to be sitting pretty where they are and making a living out of it.

Far from that, as it is still premium pricing for a premium product.

Very few companies do not wish to maximise their profitable customer base.

Completely in agreement Bob.

AAisp have created an excellent reputation for their support, and have actually wound up BT a few times - which in my book is a plus!

Their previous packages remain excellent, unless a user needs substantial daytime usage (as many of us do), when they get a tad expensive. Perhaps fairly so, perhaps not. Arguably they want to keep a high business user mix during work hours and the pricing does that and is not high to a real business.

I think Bob and I are just concerned that the complexity of the new scheme will turn off lots of low cost light users who would benefit AAisp's customer mix & bottom line. Its very transparency and fairness requires complexity which sadly may be beyond most of the british public.

And sorry if that seems harsh but this is the country where for example: people have a phone contract and complain on the O2 forums because they didn't realise it committed them to pay £NN/month for the entire 24 months until the bitter end, or on these very forums where plusnet customers joined them without realising that they throttle, or ISP helpdesks that don't know the difference between sync speed and throughput!

Hmm. I've tried it now as a new prospect and it just gives a drop-down list of units. Select 9 and it says (IIRC) 11.25GB at peak or 400GB or something offpeak.

See this post from a genuine enquirer.

To you RevK it is clear, because you already know the answers . To an enquirer it is extremely opaque and off-putting, which is a shame as basically it is a brilliant way of doing things.

You really need a ready-reckoner as I suggested earlier, so people can get it to tell them how many units for their usage pattern. Not the other way round which the current way doesn't even do well.

As for going in to order to do that - an even bigger off-put! For example following the route:-

Home Page.
Scroll down to the checker.
Enter phone number.

I get this page:-

Openreach availability checker response
Your exchange is ADSL enabled, and our initial test on your line ...

"Order Now" (button that hasn't copy/pasted)
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Be availability checker response
Be is already providing service to the Input. [8]

Click that button and nothing happens. That is because IE8 has blocked something as suspect cross-scripting:-

How does Internet Explorer help protect me from cross-site scripting attacks?

Internet Explorer's Cross-Site Scripting (XSS) Filter can help prevent one website from adding script code to another website. XSS Filter watches how websites interact, and when it recognizes a potential attack, it will automatically block script code from running. When this happens, you will see a message in the Information bar letting you know that the webpage was modified to help protect your privacy and security.

If the modified webpage does not work properly, try going to the home page of the website and navigating to the webpage directly. If the page still does not work correctly, contact the website's administrator."

I can get in by going back to:-

Home Page.
Broadband panel >> Find out more
Order now - etc.

So when you selected a number of units it said clearly what you get for it (would have been 900GB off peak for 9 units). How is that not exactly what you need? It equates "units" to "download" in a clear way. We are not trying to be difficult, honest.

Now, we could perhaps ask lots of questions to get a "usage pattern" and work out units, but I can be sure people would say that is way too complicated as well, some times you can't win. I'll see if we can find other ways to show things that are clearer to people.

As for IE complaining, I am rather puzzled. The scripting is all carefully done to only access the same site - or at least that is the intention - as we are well aware of IEs quirks and did test the site extensively with IE. So we will re-check this and try and find the cause. Thank you for letting us know.

The Be availability checker response being a tad cryptic in some cases is something we are aware of and looking to change soon.

Thanks for answering . The difficulty is as that poster that I linked to . Even I, with my fairly good mental arithmetic, would find that no use if I wanted 5GB per month peak, 35GB off-peak and 5GB night-time (mainly to allow for MS and AV updates coming through).

I did try the route to Order twice, going throught the phone number box on the Home Page. Same result. IE8 doesn't like it. I have to go out for a few minutes, later I will try Safari, FF and Chrome .

The Be message doesn't bother me as it is correct, and I think similar comes up through the route that worked.

I agree a question and answer approach to the required number of units would be unworkable. Did you read my ready-reckoner suggestion though? The table you have on the tariff page I think is quite clear, and all you need is an interactive version of that, allowing a user to input a requirement rather than the defined allowances in that table.

All the best - I wish you well with this flexible approach.

Edited by RobertoS (Thu 24-Dec-09 16:38:24)

I do appreciate people are trying to help, so thanks for the feedback.

I may be worth explaining why the tariffs are as complex as they are.

If you start on the basis that we could just charge per GB or some such as a simple tariff, then it works out fairly pricey to cater for the peak usage and still make a profit.

You find there are gaps in the evenings and over night when people could use more and not cost us more. This is where the peak and night periods come in giving more per unit to encourage people to fill in the gaps. Its giving customers more for their money in an effort to try and be fair. A bit like old Economy 7 electricity tariffs.

The same logic applies to 21CN and BE lines having different download per unit - it is to allow us to offer people more for their money. Previously we charged the same for 20CN and 21CN, but bandwidth on 21CN is getting slightly cheaper so we wanted to fair and give 21CN customers more for their money. With the BE lines usage is much lower cost for us, so again we wanted to be fair and make those lines better value for money. We did not have to - we could have kept the prices and usage per unit the same.

At the end of the day making the tariffs simple would mean people paying more; people not being rewarded for doing the downloads at off peak times and over night; people not benefiting from 21CN savings; and people not benefiting from the much cheaper bandwidth on BE lines.

Its tricky to see how we could be less complex in the way it works but still be fair.

I hope that makes some sense!

OK, calculator on http://www.aaisp.net.uk/broadband-units.html

Hope that helps.