Re: Over $300/month for PHONE service?!?

On 10/23/2011 11:15 AM, Elmo P. Shagnasty wrote:
> http://forums.macresource.com/read.php?1,1249169
>
> If I read this right, he has a primary phone and four others? adding up
> to $305 PLUS garbage fees, that's an easy $325/month total.
>
> For ****ing PHONE service?????
>
> Who in his right mind spends THAT much money for something truly as
> inconsequential as this?

Many people. There is apparently no recession. Most people have no
concept of low monthly cost cellular phone service. Many people with no
pressing need for huge amounts of data spend $70-80/month in order to be
able to watch movies, play games, and stream music.

The question is how can you profit from people that spend money like
that? Are any of the stocks of the wireless carriers poised for a big
increase? Analysts don't like any of the carriers much these days.

When I give my presentation "Smart Phones, Dumb Prices" I get about 10%
of the people to move to Pageplus.

On 23/10/11 12:20 PM, SMS wrote:
> On 10/23/2011 11:15 AM, Elmo P. Shagnasty wrote:
>> http://forums.macresource.com/read.php?1,1249169
>>
>> If I read this right, he has a primary phone and four others? adding up
>> to $305 PLUS garbage fees, that's an easy $325/month total.
>>
>> For ****ing PHONE service?????
>>
>> Who in his right mind spends THAT much money for something truly as
>> inconsequential as this?
>
> Many people. There is apparently no recession.

The recession doesn't affect those who are unaffected - by which I mean
if you and the rest of your family still have the same jobs you had
before the recession started, your personal income hasn't been affected,
and you can continue to afford the things you afforded before.

A few months after the market crashed in 2008 I was talking with someone
who manages a high end art gallery in SF. I asked how sales were doing
with the economic collapse. She said that the previous month's sales
were an all-time high for the gallery. Then she finished with "The rich
are still rich" - meaning that those who had a lot of money 3 months
earlier still had a lot of money and could buy art if it struck their
fancy. Similarly, they can also afford high cell phone bills. I know a
guy who is paying over $400/month for the cell phone bills for himself,
for 3 kids, and for a girlfriend. I suggested he tell the kids to get
jobs and pay their own bills (the youngest was 16 at that time) and he
proceeded to explain why each of them couldn't do that simple thing. Oh
well, it's his money he's burning. When he would gripe about his bills
I'd just tune him out - he made his choices to support their cell phone
addictions and "excuse" them from working to pay their own rent, own
insurance, own cell phone bills. Fortunately for all of them he's a
high paid tech worker who can (barely) afford all this largess.

jc