I think you are a few IQ points short to be able to understand what the ads are saying. They have nothing to do with overweight people. Are you being serious? They are referring to trimming the 'fat' on your current cell phone bill by cutting out unneeded things. And since when has an ad these days ever said anything informative about the product? They are simply to generate interest and get the name out there. If someone becomes interested, they can google it or phone them.
Apparently you didn't get the point I was trying to get accross here. It's not what they're saying. It's how they're saying it and how it's percieved by the audience. Many of people's purchasing decisions are made on subjective ideas rather than hard facts, such as product quality. Many people buy products for how they make them feel, not because they're better than the competition.
An ad campaign does that. Do people recycle because it gives them a big advantage? Probably not. Do they turn off their electronics in the house whenever they're not using them to save on the electicity bill? Mostly not.
So why do they do it? because they like to think of themselves as good citizens ... cutting back on deforestation by recycling paper ... although it costs their time to do so, and keeping pollution down and helping keep up the network by consuming less electricity. Again, these are based on ideas, not on the fact that they save every month. How much do you save by recycling and turning off your computer while you're away in a month? About 8-12 bucks.
Think of it this way: would a chocolate factory sell more chocolates if they had a nobel prize winner as a spokesperson or if they have a person who is soon proven to be a known pedophile as a spokesperson? Would the chocolate be bad just because people chose the wrong spokesperson? No. But would people buy it? No. Why? Because they don't want to support that kind of thing. It appeals to their feelings as family people .. and it has nothing to do with the quality of the chocolate or however cheap it is.
Not sure how true this is. A lot of kids these days have their own money.
Most don't .. especially high school kids. And I can tell you, a lot of my university schoolmates are also dependent on their parents right now ... almost none of them have jobs.
So at least for most kids in high school, the parents will make the decision. As for the ones in post-secondary, they start to think a bit more like adults in the matter and choose a carrier that suits an adult, because they want to look increasingly more like grown-ups.
ou can sign up for as little as 15 bucks a month. I would call that inexpensive. The plan I am getting is 25 bucks a month, still cheap compared to the 40-60 dollar averages out there.
The question over here is not only of price ... it's what you get for that price.
So you can pay 15 bucks all you want ... but if you get only 50 minutes any time of the week, that's not good value. It's about what you pay and how much you get for it.
I'm guessing you got the ready-made plan for $25 ... for that you got 100 minutes anytime and unlimited evenings and weekends + unlimited text messaging.
I'm with Fido ... I also have a $25 plan. But for that I get 150 minutes anytime, unlimited evenings and weekends AND unlimited incoming calls anytime. So I can just call people and tell them to call me back and talk as long as I want, for free, anytime I'd like. I may also pay a $6 access fee, but I get that many more minutes for it. AND on top of all that, I get to use the entire Rogers coverage area (larger than telus) for free.
The only incentive you have to get the koodo is if you do a hell of a lot text messaging and very little talk on your cellphone. If that's the case, then yeah, it would give you an advantage because it serves you goals. But I think most people that have cellphones use them to talk rather than text-messaging, that's the point of a cellular phone, anyway, right? Otherwise we'd all have beepers.
This is just all sorts of wrong. What you see as a negative, I see as a positive. To get out of a contract you have to pay either the remainder of the terms balance, or an average of 400 dollars, whichever is HIGHER. To get out of a Koodo plan, you just have to pay for your phone. The most expensive model they have is only like 200 bucks. So how the hell do you figure that koodo has higher fees or higher cell phone prices? Koodo pays off your cell phone for you. If you stay on long enough, it IS FREE.
Again, it's a matter of perspective. Say you want to get a phone from Koodo, you have the option of getting a Motorola KRZR, a motorola phone and a samsung phone. That's it. 3 phones to choose from, all of which without any large features and all of which are flip-phones and only the most expensive one, the KRZR has mp3 playing capability. No Sony Ericson, no Nokia ... no advanced phones of any kind. This may be ok for ones who don't want complicated phones, just something to talk on ... but for those who are brand loyal to Sony or Nokia ... well, they gotta switch the "Hello Moto".
And lets look back at that "tab" system that Koodo has in place to cover your phone cost ... yes, you may get a free or very inexpensive phone, but for that you'd have to stay on their network and use their services. For every phone, you can put $150 of its retail value on the tab, so most phones would come for free, except for the KRZR which would cost $50. As you use your monthly plans, 10% of your bill goes towards paying off the remaining "tab" on your phone. I ran the numbers on that based on your $25 per month fees, so here it is:
If you get the Samsung u410 from them, to cover your phone ($75), you'd have to keep using their services for 30 months, so 2.5 years. If you get the Motorola W385, ($125) you'd have to stay with them for 4.2 years. If you get the Moto KRZR, you have to stay with them for 5 years. Most agreements only run for 3 years.
As for the "remaining of agreement or $400 which is higher", don't know where you got those numbers from, I quote from Fido's website:
An Early Cancellation Fee (ECF) applies to all subscribers with a Fido Agreement, if , for any reason, their service is terminated prior to the end of the Fido Agreement. The ECF is the greater of the (i) $100 or (ii) $20 per month remaining in the Fido Agreement, to a maximum of $400 (plus applicable taxes), and applies for each deactivated phone number.
So yeah, the least you can pay is $100, but it goes to a maximum of $400, no more than that.
But what are we talking about here, basically? When you'll switch from a provider to another, you'd probably do it because your services are not being delivered properly ... aka your calls are dropped and/or signal drops. If those are the problems, you're most likely to encounter them within your first month of use, right? Well, Fido allows its customers who get a service agreement to unsubscribe from their plan, free of charge, within the first 30 days, contingent on them handing back their phone and getting a refund of whatever they already paid for it. Koodo doesn't do that. If you want to try their services, you can't. You have to buy the phone and if you want to switch within the first month ... what will they say? "Pay up, sucker!!"
I find that a bit hard for a brand that has not yet proven any reliability to the market. It may be a subsidiary of Telus, but most people don't know that and it's not apparent in their advertising. Nor is it being said on their own website.
So, do people want to risk getting screwed over for trying lower costs, just because they like text messaging? I find that very unlikely, don't know about you.
Are you saying we should only be limited to Telus or Rogers then because they're the ones who built the network?
Well, now that I found out Koodo is a Telus subsidiary, that may be a moot point indeed. But if I didn't know this at first, how do you think anybody else will know this too? They don't say it on the website, they don't advertise it, thus, nobody associates Koodo with Telus.
And yes, most people should choose one of the companies that built the network, because that's the way the communications market is set up in Canada. It's an oligopoly, lead by the companies that have the networks in place. If you choose anybody else, you're more likely to get screwed over with higher prices and worse service. Why? Barriers of entry. The fact that those networks are owned by very few makes it close to impossible for anyone else to come into the market and compete with them on price or quality.
Look at what's happening to the internet market because of Bell? That may as well happen to the cellphone market soon.
Telus doesn't even offer anything with text for less than 30 bucks a month. So once agian... wrong.
And you confirmed my belief. You got Koodo because you do a massive ammount of text-messaging as opposed to voice communication. So for you, it's great. For you it makes sense, and that's exactly the market they want to go for: people who talk very little and text out of their minds.
But I ask you now: what do most of the people in the cell-phone market do most of the time with their cell-phones? Do they talk or do they text?
You see, the problem in question here is not what you prefer ... because for you Koodo may indeed seem a lot cheeper ... it answers your personal needs and for you it is a very logical choice. But here we're talking about market share and the preferences of the whole population of Canada who have or want to have cellphones. The success of a company in the market is not determined by a very small niche which the company may serve, but the market as a whole.
So they may get the heavy-text-messaging market for themselves, indeed. But the problem is that they probably won't grow from that, and that leaves them with very little profit growth capability. Investors know that, and stock prices will not rise very much. And if there's no investment, there's less growth. Its only way out is if its parent company, Telus, subsidies things for them ... making Koodo a loss-leader to beat back Fido, which is owned by Rogers. Loss leaders in an Oligopoly? Hell, you have to be a bit crazy to do that.
