RE: UKNM: Underwriting phone bill

[Greg Baker]

I agree with Clay here, 

implementing it would, I agree Duncan, take a little care, but if you

are offering this discounted service, it would be easy enough to install

the correct software on the users machine - only weighing in at a few

kb's, or the right servier-side programming, to allow this with a degree

of ease.

Personally I think the discounting idea is sound, it encourages window

shopping and stops the blatant abuse that freephone numbers will suffer.


Greg Baker

Deep Need


-----Original Message-----

From: Duncan Clubb [

duncan [dot] clubboffworld [dot] net (mailto:duncan [dot] clubboffworld [dot] net)

]

Sent: Tuesday, July 27, 1999 4:57 PM

To:

uk-netmarketingchinwag [dot] com

Subject: Re: UKNM: Underwriting phone bill



Clay Shirky wrote:


> >From the Yank perspective, this whole business of metered calls looks

> not merely daft, but is also a drag on e-commerce, since the sense

> that time online is precious mitigates against the sense of comfort

> needed to get used to shopping.

>

> Have any ecommerce sites offered to explicitly reimburse customers for

> time spent on their site if they pruchase something? One could either

> do it with a counter (you spent 27 minutes here, so at 4p a minute

> we'll discount your purchase 1 pound 12) or just do like easyJet and

> offer a pound off for web purchases, but tie it explicitly to a

> discount for the metered rate, which would pay for somethig between 25

> and a hundred minutes, depending on the telco charge.


Er, are you serious?  You can't actually measure how long anyone looks

at a

page - you can only measure the time spent between various clicks within

your

site.  Using this scheme would encourage people to open up several

browsers,

go to several stores, and spend forever going from page to page,

dropping the

line every now and again.  Besides, almost everything available on the

net is

cheaper anyway - there's your discount!


Also, why this hangup with UK v. US - the trade off in both locations is

free

ISP or free calls - you can't have both.  If someone does come up with a

plan

for free ISP and calls, they will have to charge you in another way,

anyway -

no such thing as a free lunch (and why should there be?)!


> -clay


--

Duncan Clubb

e-mail:

duncan [dot] clubboffworld [dot] net

    Offworld Industries,

http:   www.offworld.net        Britannia House,

Tel:    (44)(0)171 278 3464      4-24 Britannia Street,

FAX:    (44)(0)171 278 5820      London WC1X 9JD


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