On Sat, May 26, 2012 at 09:39:16PM -0400, Luke S. Crawford wrote: > On Sat, May 26, 2012 at 10:06:03AM +1000, Matthew Palmer wrote: > > We pay what our providers think they can get away with. Like most pricing > > decisions, they're not based on any "technical logic", they're based on what > > the market will bear. Feel free to turn the process around -- decide what > > the service is worth to you, tell the provider of the service that price, > > and let them decide if they want to provide it to you at that price. Don't > > be too surprised if you get monkeys in exchange for your peanuts, though. > > Are you suggesting that you get worse service after you negotiate a better > deal with a particular provider?
To a certain extent, yes. It has been my experience (from both the service provider and the customer point-of-view) that customers who aren't worth as much to a supplier don't get as much "love", because the cost of losing their business to a competitor is much less (or, in some cases, would be a net win). However, my main point was that if you are mainly concerned about price, rather than quality of service (or, more precisely, the value-for-money ratio between the two), you are likely to end up with a substandard service. I will concede, however, that I didn't make that point particularly clear, for which I apologise. - Matt -- Advocating Object-Oriented Programming is like advocating Pants-Oriented Clothing. -- Jacob Gabrielson