Internet, Cable, and Cell Phone Service

I read two articles about price discrimination, one about a man and his struggle with the Comcast internet service and the other written by the same man after a representative from Comcast read his article and called him in response. While at the introduction of a internet service plan it seems there is no price discrimination and that everyone is offered the same deal and it will never change. However, this does not seem to be the case. After reading this article about this man and his repeated calls to Comcast threatening to cancel their service because of uncalled for price increases I remembered a time in my life when my family had a similar issue. We had Sprint cell phone service and we were on a family plan with a certain number of minutes and text messages (this is before smart phones and data plans) and as long no one on the plan went over the limit our set price shouldn't change. Yet, every month our bill would be a higher price. My mom had to call and fight with the people over their seemingly made up policies. What seems to actually be happening in these situations is that these companies are attempting to price discriminate by finding each individuals maximum price that they will pay for their service. They are accomplishing this by raising the price and coming up with reasons for why until this individual threatens to cancel and no longer use their service, and this seems to be the case with every internet, cable, and cell phone service around today. We eventually got fed up with Sprint and switched to Verizon, the service is better anyway. While the man in the articles is still fighting the struggle against Comcast and their price discrimination.

Resources:

http://www.forbes.com/sites/timothylee/2012/06/06/comcasts-obnoxious-price-discrimnation-strategy/

http://www.forbes.com/sites/timothylee/2012/06/06/comcasts-pricing-shell-game/