I'm familiar with your point of view, so I probably understand you a little better than others here. So, I take that you're blaming people like myself for the collapse of otherwise sustainable concept (I argued against the sustainability of the concept elsewhere).
In my defense:
First - all the controls were in the hands of CellNUVO, and judging by their behavior, they wanted to have more users, even with multiple accounts, and they wanted us to swipe more. If they broke some fragile balance by creating an overuse, that was not my moral responsibility to foresee, as long as I followed the rules (?)
Second - the points I accumulated, are only that - points. Cellnuvo should/will receive real money for the points I earned, and effectively decide what to do with it to their advantage. They will only give me as much as they want, and when they want - I have no special rights. They are not a bank!
Third - see my First point - CellNUVO has complete control over the rules they apply to us, so they can adjust them at any given point of time.
In a free society, there will be, and are, others that will try what you're asking for - just check FreeUp, Beast Mobile, Freedompop
Capitalism works, take it from a refugee from socialist Poland of 1984
Wow! A lot of questions in a short post.
It seems a long stretch to posit that a small segment of uber frugals were responsible for ringplus demise and cellnuvo current dilemma rather than business plan, market conditions, funding. top tier carrier conditions imposed, etc.
" Thrift" is a wonderful concept. I am thrifty , as are my family and close friends.
But extreme thrift ('Uber Thrift') is the flip side to "obsessive spending". Neither are productive or positive.
The Nthcircle is a wonderful resource (if not the best!) for thrift news and concepts. But sometimes, quite a few of the NthCircle comments/threads lean towards an obsessive 'Uber Thriftness" : particularly as it relates to CellNuvo swiping.
But in the final analysis, CellNuvo and RingPlus must bear the responsibility for not anticipating the impact of the "Uber Frugal" segment upon their business plan.
If you offer an all you can eat buffet featuring crab legs you are playing the odds. If you locate that buffet next to the university, and send an announcement to the football team that unlimited crab legs are featured, is that a wise business decision?
Love the different views! I can say swiping did not negatively impact my availability towards others. In fact, the opposite as it made my day more productive by taking those idle times into a bit of income without having to work extra hours.
This resulted in income to pay cellphone bills which in turn resulted in more entertainment (e.g. passes for the family to the aquarium, more dining out opportunities, a bit more financial flexibility, etc).
Of course, each person's experience is different. The same applies to priorities. I do have to agree that CellNuvo held the keys and made the rules.
All in all, if most people followed the rules imposed by the CellNuvo team and encouraged potentially unsustainable behavior, they are ultimately to blame.
I mean, is like you reaching out to your employer asking if you could work extra hours. Then, your employer telling you that you can work all the hours you want.
Then, they turn around and say that they can't pay because they did not anticipate you would work as many hours in the first place and/or that they failed to anticipate they would not be paid for your contributions (due to vendor payment issues) until 4 months from now.
Anyway, are there be better things than CellNuvo, sure - especially now that the ROI sucks. Will they impact my availability for others? You bet (e.g. another job or even working extra hours)!
I sure hope they bounce back from this mess, as they worked great for our family.
Somehow blaming frugal people for the issues of these two companies precisely designed for frugal people doesn't make any sense. I am not sure where you pulled this logic from. It is a senseless attack on people who choose to use services like cellnuvo.
Ringplus collapsed because it didn't attract enough frugal people! Ringplus had very little to do with customers not spending enough money on the services or using too much data etc. Ringplus had targets for customer numbers set in partnership with sprint and it failed to meet them by a large margin. It simply was not able to attract enough customers with ever increasing allotments and wacky plan names, social media, flash promos and hype. It then fell out for whatever reason with the company it relied on (sprint) and it was game over.
Cellnuvo thrives when customers swipe for ads. Amassing gold = more money for cellnuvo. So the precise opposite of what you say. To put it into perspective since the start of the amazon and carrier payments each account has been able to withdraw about $1300 over the 16 or so months. There was opportunity for almost everyone to cash everything out. Since some customers didn't take that opportunity cellnuvo didn't have to pay out as much.
The achilles heel of cellnuvo is the fact that ads are not uniformly spread over a year. People panic during ad dry spells like right now. Their other issue is communication is very weak leading to a whole host of problems. There must have been some money management errors in there too. None of which has to do with frugal customers. Cellnuvo needs more frugal customers and more people willing to swipe ads. And if they amass gold instead of spending it then all the better for cellnuvo.
Here is a scenario that makes the other logic work - Just imagine this fictional situation - We are not earning anything, we're stealing. If we don't steal to much, to fast, the people we're stealing from might not realize that they are being robbed
mmfacemm wrote: "Somehow blaming frugal people for the issues of these two companies precisely designed for frugal people doesn't make any sense. I am not sure where you pulled this logic from. It is a senseless attack on people who choose to use services like cellnuvo."
Never my intention or thought.
As I explained, there is a huge difference between the Frugal and "Uber Frugal' segments.
This 'difference is evidenced in life style and priorities.
The Frugal segment represent a very attractive consumer base for many companies/advertisers.
Not so for the "Uber Frugal"
Often enough , the Uber Frugal segment can make locust look like butterflies when it comes to decimating a company or well intentioned government program.
How did government programs enter the conversation? In the context of this thread, there is no commonality between a for profit business and government programs. The uber frugal is cellnuvo:s target group. Plus, you already said your OP was meant to encourage more participation. So what's your overall point. Swipe if you want or don't swipe if you dont want.
