It looks as though Dialog are determined to force all of their low
usage customer onto the pay-as-you-go "portals".
I received my "Dear Customer" letter about the new DataStar minimum
fee on Saturday. As I know that some of you never get to see the
official missives from Dialog, I have reproduced the essentials
below:
"Dear Customer,
DataStar Minimum Fee.
I am writing to inform you that as of January 1 2000 we will be
introducing a minimum fee for DataStar.
Your January invoice will reflect the following charges:
Annual Service Fee = 300 SFR / USD 240 (billed in January)
Usage Prepayment = 900 SFR / USD 660 (billed in January)
The Annual Service Fee and Usage Prepayment will be charged per
contract not per userid.
Customers who have a fixed price plan will not be invoiced the Usage
Prepayment but will be billed the Annual Service fee in January.
As you can appreciate, the up-front investment in technology and
infrastructure costs associated with a service like DataStar is
significant. We have found that there is a minimum level of customer
spend, below which it is uneconomical to offer the service. I hope
you will understand the economic logic of the change and that this
amendment to DataStar pricing, is in the long term interests of the
service and it's clients."
I was on the point of cancelling my DataStar account in any case as I
was finding access far too erratic, slow and unpredictable. As for
the new "Portals" - has anyone else had trouble getting a proper
results list? I generally get a number of results reported, for
example 27, a message saying results 1-20 but only four ever seem to
be appear on the page. When I click for the next page of results, it
starts at 21 and again I only seem to get four. All rather odd.
-------------------------
Karen Blakeman, RBA Information Services
88 Star Road, Caversham, Berks RG4 5BE, UK
Tel:0118 947 2256, Fax:0870 056 8547
E-Mail:[log in to unmask]
Tales from the Terminal Room http://www.rba.co.uk/tfttr/
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