And if they don't pay you, it's more trouble then it's worth trying to collect from them. They think that it's part of tech support. It eats into your profit margin. All too frequently, ISPs and e-commerce businesses fail to return calls or don't answer the telephone. When a customer can find a live person to speak with, the representative is often not knowledgable about a company's services.
Web sites tend to answer every question except the speed and cost of the service.
Jerry Howe, president of Gabriel Communications, a St. Louis-based commercial ISP, said the Internet will revolutionize communications. It's the standard because you can pick up a phone anywhere in the world and hear a dialtone. The Internet has been around for 30 years. If I convey everything I'm telling you over the phone, it will cost 5 cents a minute. If I do it on e-mail, it costs almost nothing.