Industry practice for BGP costs - one time or fixed/monthly?

Sun May 27 19:38:39 UTC 2012

On Sun, May 27, 2012 at 12:34:22PM +1000, Matthew Palmer wrote:
> 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:

> > > ... 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).

How is this communicated to the people doing the support?  is there a 
'cheap jerk' bit in the database?   Until I got my own company, 
working as the technical guy in another company, I was never 
told what a customer was paying.  I mean, I could see what plan they
were on, but as a technical person I don't see the price they are
paying unless I go directly into the billing database, and that sort 
of thing is usually super secret.  

>From a "business logic" perspective, I agree that it seems like
you describe the way it ought to be.  Sometimes at very small companies?
this is the case.  I remember a few times, the boss telling me 
"customer X is a big deal.  go out of your way for them"  - but that
happens less and less as the company gets bigger.  Think, for 
a moment; if it's not in the database in an easily accessible
manner, even if you do all the negotiation yourself, how many 
customers would you need before you lost track of who underpaid and
who overpaid?  for me, the limit would be around 5.  I bet even a 
professional relationship manager would have a hard time around 100
or so.  

Of all my current providers, the worst response I get from sales
is from the provider that I'm paying full price for.  I mean, maybe
that's because  they see themselves as premium and I'm small?
but maybe that's because I showed weakness by accepting the list price.
Or maybe it's because when I met the salesperson I was driving a 
cheap car and dressed for work.  I don't know.  