Peter, at 22:30 on May 29 1995, you wrote to Bill Grimsley...

PP> Talking to an uncle of my wifes the other day who works for Telecom I asked 
PP> him about these schemes offering discount phone charges, the union that I'm 
PP> in is offering a 25% discount on your phone bill. 

Interesting.  The highest discount I currently know of is only 15%.

PP> Anyway this uncle said that the people offering the discount are resellers 
PP> and he doesn't know how they can do such deals as the resellers have to pay 
PP> Telecom for the calls :-)

Given that a 1 cent (i.e. 4%) reduction per 25 cent call fee results in a
loss of revenue to Telstra of $1.2 million (source: Frank Blount, ABC-TV),
a 25% overall discount equates to a loss in the order of $7.5 million, not
at all what I'd call a trivial amount.

PN> with OTHER things to be added as well, like electrivity, gas, 
PN> Pay-TV etc in the future.

BG> So you say.  As they don't currently exist, I'm yet to be convinced.

PP> And may never eventuate.

Sure, but I'd be far more concerned about the possibility of the reseller
no longer being around, if and when they ever did.

BG> How can you save people money with discounts which don't yet 
BG> exist? Quite aside from which, changing from quarterly to monthly
BG> billing will also cost even more money by way of lost interest. 

PP> Into the high finance here Bill, 2 months intrest on my account 
PP> wouldn't pay for the stamp to post the payment :-)

True, same here (actually, I pay on the freecall number via credit card, so
that's more or less irrelevant).  However, that's not really the point,
which is that paying monthly instead of quarterly MUST cost more in the
end.

Regards, Bill
@EOT:

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