How Karoo Could Double Their Trade Over Night By Paul Bawden

If you live in Hull and want a telephone line you are very lucky as you don't have to call on BT or any of the other companies who claim to be cheap. Kingston Communications are cheaper that any other phone provider in England. But that's where the luck ends.

KC offers a reasonable service for telephone lines in the Hull area, they do have customer care problems but all in all they are a good company. Because of the price, no one really wants to go to BT. However, if you want to connect to the internet, that's when KC becomes a nightmare of a company.

Their Dial-Up prices are extraordinarily high. For example Karoo Anytime Dial-Up is £17.99 a month. An equivalent account from Tesco costs £12.49 a month. Now you may say well just go to Tesco then! KC will not allow it through their phone lines as they would charge any ISP that wanted to, more money than it would be worth.

Now you may also say that when you get a cheap line that would mean you can afford to pay a bit more for your internet. That would be ok if the connection was stable. Karoo is going down a lot more than it should. Just when you want to be online for something important Karoo has an uncanny knack of being down.

Broadband, on the other hand appears to be quite reliable. However a lot of people on Dial-Up will not pay Karoo an outrageous price for broadband on principle. Let's face it; would you go back to a company and pay well over the odds for broadband when you have had nothing but problems with your Dial-Up connection?

After talking to a lot of people in and out of Hull, the general opinion on Karoo Broadband is this:

People on BT can choose which ISP to use so they can pick the most reliable/cheapest provider of their choice. If you live in Hull, it's Karoo or nothing and this IS SIMPLY NOT FAIR. As a consumer, prices aside, we should be able to choose any ISP we want.

After paying over the odds for Dial-Up and getting a crap connection, why the hell should I give these jokers even more of my hard earned cash? People have even left Hull to escape what has been referred to in recent times as The Karoo Trap! What should karoo do to turn this around?

Bring all their prices inline with the best of the rest. This would stop customers thinking they are being penalised just because they live in hull Invest more money into making Dial-Up more reliable. This would restore people's faith in Karoo and thus would make more customers consider upgrading to broadband.

Allow healthy competition from other ISP's Customers would probably stay with Karoo if they did the above but a least they would feel they had a choice. Give free modem and connection for broadband like other ISP's They would get more business overnight as people do not want to pay good money to Karoo for something they can get free elsewhere.

So, there you are. If KC wants us to invest in their product they in turn should listen and invest in their customers by giving us what we actually want rather than what they think we want. A fairer deal for the residents of Hull!

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