🚀 go-pugleaf

Brian wrote:
> 
> Easy solution - use another POP/SMTP provider.  Even though I don't use
> @Home (Road Runner), I use Yahoo! and a few other free POP accounts
> (mailandnews.com) that work flawlessly every time I pop into them or send
> mail out via SMTP to them.
> 
> Friends of mine who have @Home hate the Email service also, and most have
> gone the route I have.  Broadband into Yahoo! mail for instance - works
> great.
> 
> Just an idea.

Yes, and this is a rational alternative to some extent. There *are* some
things to consider, however.  Free email services have some downsides:
many embed ads in the email, their reliability isn't 99%, they have
limited functionality, there's no pretense of a customer 'support'
function that can be expected to respond to outages or failures, and there
is absolutely no consumer leverage where a fee isn't being paid.  Not all
have every downside, or even most, of course. YMMV.  (I've examined and
monitored about a dozen of these services for the past 6-12 months.)

Thus, for reasonably reliable, ad-free, full featured email, I pay
$35/year to an email ISP for each account.  AT&T@Home promises seven email
accounts in their advertising.  $35 x 7 = $245/year.  Thus, @Home's
failure to provide what they promise (and what other businesses
consistently demonstrate *can* be delivered) can be thought of as an
overcharge of $15-$20/month based on market prices.  When you multiply
that by about 3,000,000 subscribers, it's a hefty chunk of change ... "Up
to" $735,000,000 per year.

Since when is it a legitimate business practice to keep fees for services
not delivered? The last time I checked, the Uniform Commercial Code
"frowned" upon such practices.

-- 
~~~~~~~~ "Fish will be the last to discover water."  (Einstein) ~~~~~~~~
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