From: aa@iti.org (Aayush Asthana)
Subject: Re: Prodigy - Don't even think about it!
Summary: Not worth it: Prodigy
Keywords: Prodigy, Junk
Organization: Industrial Technology Institute
Date: Tue, 10 Nov 1992 15:46:38 GMT

A while back Bill Rubin wrote in reply to my original posting:

[.. earlier comments deleted..]

Bill
Appreciate your comments.  However, must point out a few things.

+:day you sign on, not the day you ask them to send the software (this should 
+:seem obvious to most people since you can buy these packs in the store and 

Not the way it appears on my credit card!
Perhaps may have to do with the fact that this was a phone purchase,
not a store purchase.

+:obviously they have no idea when you will be signing on).  It is true that 
+:you can get the same information in your daily paper, but then you have to 
+:wait for that paper to arrive and go out and get it.  On Prodigy you get 
+:news as it happens, and you don't have to buy the WSJ, Business Week, etc to 

I did not find the depth I am looking for in Prodigy's coverage of
business stories.  And since I ALREADY have access to these sources,
why should I replace them with prodigy?

+:supplement your local paper.  What else?  Ads..  yes, Prodigy has ads.  You 
+:get used to them after awhile and learn to ignore them if you choose to.  

Unlike your paper where you can flip pages and get rid of ads, on
Prodigy you don't have control on ads at all!  You must wait for the
graphics to show up and slowly at that.  An average session across 4
days lasted as much as 45 minutes -- all just trying to access news
that would have value to me.  It's the time factor that bothered me
in addition to lack of control on the screen.

+:Your newspaper has ads, too, and you pay to read them.  Does anyone complain 
+:about that?  And information by phone?  Would this be by way of a 900 or 

Sure, lots of people do complain; except that they can just glance
at a page and get rid of it; not to belabor the point, but Prodigy
just makes you wait till an ad appears; with papers and magazines I
don't have to wait to be fed an ad.. another point:  computer screens
are small enough without having to cope with meaningless graphics
that occupy, sometimes, half the screen!  Thus, content on a page is
substantially less than any of the other alternatives!

+:other special charge call?  As for home banking, you say that "all banks 
+:have this".  Well, not here in NY, only a couple have it and one is on 

Well, I suggest that now as an informed consumer ask for it:  if enough
people want a lower cost service they could get it, you know.

+:Prodigy.  The AA ticketing service is standard Eaasy Sabre you will get 
+:anywhere else, and it includes all published fares.  You are probably 

No.  It is not the same as that used by travel agents.  It is the
CONSUMER version of that:  modified in some respects.  To give you
an example of an inherent problem and how this can be a waste of
time:  you can book a flight from your local (not major hub even) to
an international destination even though the carrier does not fly
from the local airport:  it goes through the iteration and gives you
a cost etc., and then in the end tells you that the flight is not
available:  this should be the other way around, don't you think?
Sure, common sense dictates that int'l carriers don't fly into every
aitport; but then not every major airport gets every airline; should
I pay for a service that requires me to know what flights/carriers
operate out of airports before-hand and then pay 25% above
competitive rates?

+:talking about consolidator tickets with lower fares and you won't get those 
+:directly from any airline.  However, you CAN search for the lowest normal 
+:fares and flights and become a better educated consumer.  It's true, the 

A phone call to a consolidator/bucket house is more educative as to
the true margins that regular travel agencies make:  list prices on
Eaasy Sabre are higher than what you can get from travel agents;
travel agent prices are higher than those of consolidators.

+:shopping and prices are not really that great a deal, but that's not 
+:Prodigy, it's the merchants who have signed on and if you don't want to buy 

Ok: shopping and prices are not a great deal on Prodigy - we are
agreed on that point.

+:anything there's nothing that says that you have to.  How great a deal is 

I agree:  As the number of features on Prodigy becomes less useful,
Prodigy overall becomes less useful too!

+:
+:Anyway, if you're interested in Prodigy, give it a try.  You may like it, 
+:then again you may not.  It all depends on what you're looking for and what 
+:you're willing to pay.  Personally, I am unwilling to pay by the hour for 

Certainly, it's a matter of choice:  not every customer may have
been affected in say the recent Sears auto scam but those who are
have every right to present information since the vendor can be a
potential source of a rip-off....

I would like to point out that this comes full circle to your first
statement 'It's not often that you see so much misinformation..' --
I think it is important for people to know both sides of the story:
your positive experience balances out my negative experience... but
my experience of Prodigy and the subsequent warning to folks on
Usenet does not in any way constitute `mis-information'... one-sided
yes, but certainly accurate as to my experience and not `wrong' or
`mis-leading,' as I provide the context for people to either
identify with or reject my statements... and at the limit since no
information is absolutely complete every statement can be
mis-construed as mis-information if that criterion were to be
used. 

Be that as it may, all of this is part of being an educated
consumer, and I certainly learnt the value of Prodigy: what I am not
missing and what others find valuable...

+:Disclaimer: Yes, IBM owns half of Prodigy but I am just a satisfied user...
+:

I did not know that.. and thank you for the other side of the story.


To Adam Lasnick "Keys":  Sure, I agree that my statements were
one-sided but the context I provided (not just the denunciation)
would be recognized or rejected by Usenet readers.  And my intention
was not to do any `service,' or `dis-service,' to Prodigy:  just to
provide misc.consumers a negative experience.  I am glad that you
have presented both sides of the story:  obviously demographics,
user needs, and service perceptions vary and Prodigy cannot satisfy
everybody all the time.  In that respect Prodigy should make clear
some of their limitations other than just the benefits up front in
marketing their services - analogous to product labelling - an area
in which software developers in my opinion are charging an extra
premium for lack of control and accountability; but that is an entirely different
thread.

-- 
[] Regards,   | Industrial    :      _________ ___________ ___________
Aayush Asthana| Technology    :    /___   ___//___    ___//___    ___/
aa@iti.org    | Institute     :   ____/  /___    /  /    ____/  /____ 
(313) 769-4652| Ann Arbor, MI :  /__________/   /__/    /___________/