If you look at it from Xtra's point of view it really goes like this :

Category 1 people : The people that access their Xtra pop account, but
dial-up on a non Xtra ISP, generally would be paying Xtra a maximum of $5
per month
Category 2 people : The people that access their Xtra pop account, but
dial-up with Xtra, generally would be paying Xtra a decent amount of
money... maybe the $10 plan, or the Flat rate ($27.95?) plan.

After making this change, category one people have two choices.... 1) Keep
their Xtra address, which has often been in use for donkeys years (I have
had an Xtra pop account since 1996), which is often on business cards, and
change Xtra to be their Dial-up/ADSL provider.
or 2) Close down their Xtra account. (As an afterthought, I had choice 3 )
3) Use Xtramail (webmail).

So really, Category 1 people, who don't really pay any real money anyway,
get annoyed. Category 1, either close their account, which is no major loss
to Xtra, or they open up a proper Dial-up account, which is a great thing
for Xtra.

Category 2 people, which are the _important_ customers, do not notice or
care.

So hence, for Xtra it is a good marketing / money making exercise in a lot
of ways.

Of course, it absolutely sucks to be a person affected by this, plus it also
sucks for other ISP's, as they will undoubtably loose customers over this.
Note that Clear seems to offer a similar policy on Pop mail.

My 2 cents anyway....

Dave

----- Original Message -----
From: "Tortise@Paradise" <tortise@paradise.net.nz>
To: <adsl@lists.unixathome.org>
Sent: Saturday, December 21, 2002 1:13 PM
Subject: XTRA refusing Alternative ISP Access to POP3 Mail 0900 20-12-2002
onwards

> Anyone else noticed they can no longer access their XTRA e-mail from
another
> ISP dial in? (I can no longer access my XTRA e-mail from my Paradise ADSL
> connection and XTRA tell me they implemented this yesterday 0900)
> I was not advised about this change and I think this stinks something
foul.
> The timing of this "implementation" also stinks.
> Is this anti-competitive or what???
> Anyone else any views??
> Do other ISP's allow this still?
> Kind regards,
> David Hingston MB ChB MBA
> _________________________________________________________________________
> mailto:tortoise@paradise.net.nz
> http://hingston.yi.org/
> http://pcmc.yi.org/
>
>
>
> --
> This message is part of the NZ ADSL mailing list.
> see http://unixathome.org/adsl/ for archives, FAQ,
> and various documents.
> To unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@lists.unixathome.org
> with "unsubscribe adsl" in the body of the message
>
>

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