SMS <scharf.steven@geemail.com> amazed us all with the following in
news:MVPRj.7834$iK6.6019@nlpi069.nbdc.sbc.com:

> Scott wrote:
>
>> How do you figure them to be low-profit? MVNO customers come with
>> no
>> acquisition or retention costs,
>
> How do you figure that? Of course there are acquisition costs.

Not for MVNO customers- that cost is the burden of the reseller alone.

>The
> prepaid phones are sold at below cost,

Which provides a nice write-off to offset the income.

> and there are still marketing
> and advertising expenses.

Not with an MVNO. You do know how this works, don't you?

>
> I probably should have said "lower profit" not "low profit." Sure you
> might have a few prepaid customers using massive amounts of air time,
> and ending up providing more revenue than a post paid customer, but
> it's not common.
>
>> far lower billing costs and no credit or collections costs associated
>> with them.
>
> But the carriers have been driving down these costs with eBills and
> electronic payments, either debit or credit. It also costs money to
> market the airtime cards.

I see a pattern. You lumped MVNO and prepaid into the same class of
customers. I pointed out your very flawed opinion about MVNO, so now
you are talking about prepaid exclusively. How interesting.

Now, as to your claims abourt ebills and electronic payments. The
carrier has no billing cost associated with an MVNO customer, except to
bill the the reseller for the total minutes used by their customers.
And the cost of payment is much different than the cost of collecting
that payment. Again, there is no additional cost associated to either
prepaid or MVNO to collect payments.

Of course, someone of your self-professed expertise would already know
that, wouldn't they?

>
>> Of course, your opinion is probably a little warped because your
>> beloved Verizon hasn't picked up on that yet. Better to misrepresent
>> the truth than admit they are missing a cash cow.
>
> I don't love any company. I have no idea why Verizon has eschewed
> making a serious effort in prepaid. Well actually I do have an idea.
> I'd say that they're worried that a decent prepaid offering would
> cannibalize into the more profitable postpaid sales, given that many
> customers consider only Verizon when looking for wireless service

Cite? And I am looking for an independent study proving your specific
claim that "many customers consider ONLY Verizon."



>