I can’t stand when a company says they are doing something for my benefit when it really is for their benefit. Last year, ADT, my home monitoring service, asked me in a letter:
"How would you like only 4 ADT bills a year? It’s possible with our new quarterly billing."
Now I understand business and this is not being done out of convenience to me, but out of cash flow for them. Instead of billing me for service after each month, they now bill be for each quarter before it happens. They are gaining 3 months of cash flow from all their customers. This is a tremendous advantage for them. I could care less if I pay the bill every 3 months or every month. It’s not a hassle to me, it’s only more cash out of my pocket into theirs.
This is a great strategy for cash flow if you can convince your clients to go along…of force them to do it. No thank you, ADT.
By seeing this, I am not as upset about the email I got from Vonage today:
“As a convenience to you and to reduce unnecessary emails, starting next month we will no longer send you monthly billing notification emails. As always, you will continue to have access to all of your monthly billing information through your Vonage web account. You can login 24/7 from any computer with an Internet connection, worldwide, to check your billing and payment information as well as make any changes to your account. You can also continue to review payment information from your credit card provider.”
It is not an inconvenience, or unnecessary, to tell me that I have a statement ready for review and that a charge has been made to my credit card!
To paraphrase the local campaign ads, “what are they thinking?!”