Oh, the family spends plenty on iPods, iTunes and accessories. My daughter is getting ready to get the Touch. And the New Florence innovation blog is rife with positive Apple mentions.
But I try to practice what I preach to clients. The benefits of vendor consolidation are grossly overrated. Split your dollars across many vendors. Also, vendors often misinterpret long term relationships as license to pull lock-in shenanigans. Benchmark them constantly and refresh your vendor base periodically.
Take our recent decision around Verizon FiOS. You have to wonder what Verizon’s FiOS marketing budget is. We got a piece of mail about it every other day. So I finally did bite. But not for the triple play – just to upgrade the home phone and internet access. I kept cable with Brighthouse and in gratitude (or by just asking) they gave us $ 20 a month off. Verizon with a much faster line and 2 reconfigured lines will be $ 30 less a month. Not bad for a day’s work.
I then turn my attention to AT&T Wireless. Been getting mail from Sprint, T-Mobile and MetroPCS with much better plans. Go to the AT&T store to discuss our plan. Useless. Need to call customer service. After 2 dropped lines go round and round with a “customer retention” rep.
“We cannot create a special plan for you”. “Ok, how about a credit?” “Why do you deserve one?” “15 years of being a loyal customer” “Our network is much better than the competition” “So, how come I keep getting bumped to 2G Edge so often wherever I go?” I resisted telling her she ought to spend some time in Korea to see how really bad her network is. Or that her own CEO has acknowledged service issues.
The conversation deteriorated and turned to termination fees. “You will owe us $ 175 for each of your family member lines”. “Wait a minute, I thought you prorate that over life of contract” “Only for customers who signed up after 2008” “So you will penalize me for being a customer too long? I have been a wireless customer for with AT&T for 15 years and for other AT&T products for 30 years”.
I have a letter in to the CEO. If he behaves the same way, we will move each line away as the contract period ends. And split them across multiple vendors. And chalk it up as having ignored my own advice – too many eggs in that basket.
Same thing with Apple. I want to see Zune become better and better. I want to see Google Android get better and better. I want to see Netbooks pull Apple down to more reasonable pricing on its own laptops. I want to see Apple offer its customers better AT&T and other competing plans around the iPhone.
Competition is good. But it is useless if I as a consumer do not take advantage of it. I need to keep sending signals to the market I want more of it.
So, I will always be an Apple fan. But I will never be a unquestioning fanboy.
