dquigley

I understand the confusion, because I had to read the title twice to understand what was meant by the $5/month as well.

It isn't necessarily wrong, just potentially confusing if you read it the wrong way.

Does anyone know of other cities / areas using this type of pricing? It sounds like this is pretty new, and I'd be interested in seeing any research / studies on the long term impact of this kind of pricing.

I could see how it is both useful and could have a disproportionate, negative impact on lower social-economic classes.

It used to be the case that you'd get the phone subsidized by your service plan from Verizon, but not any longer. Verizon and the other major US carriers stopped subsidizing phones in the past few years.

For me the biggest reason I wanted to buy through Verizon was they were offering a promotional $200 trade in value for my Note 4. For some people selling their phone separately would be a better deal though, so even that won't matter.

The training I have gone through in product management provides a more nuanced approach:

1) Get customer feedback by actually visiting and talking with customers in the environment where they use your app/service. This contextual knowledge should be helpful in getting to a root problem and not just a surface concern.

2) Don't depend on just one customer's feedback. Instead, survey at least a portion of your customer base to find out if this is a common problem or not.

3) Have a clear business growth strategy for which customer segments you are looking to grow, whether that's keeping existing customers, taking competitor's customers, etc and let that further filter which ideas move to the top of your list.

I don't think there are any magic bullets to ensure you get prioritization right every time, but this process might help some.

I enjoy these types of articles because they show a historical, non-digital approach to "hacking" the system. Or put another way, escaping the system that wasn't treating them justly.

But I can appreciate that some who want HN to remain strictly tech focused.

With a market cap of less than $350 million, shouldn't Google just buy them? I realize that they'd pay more than that, and that there might not be enough stock available to get a controlling share, but it would be an interesting strategy if they could pull it off.

Just checked it out. Looks interesting. The pricing structure is still not quite the perfect fit for me, so let me explain.

I've got around 20 clients I have to meet with in person every 6-12 weeks. I'd like to have a client app I can install on each of their computers (PC and Mac) so at any time I can jump on and help them without any prompt (other than possibly a "allow David access, yes or no" option.

It is likely that the real problem is that I'm just not charging enough. With what I current charge my clients, I can't justify $5 / month for a client who generates on average $15-30 in revenue each month (that's average, because I don't meet with them every month).

I like the Copilot Classic pay by the minute pricing, and if my users were more tech savy, that could work well. But they aren't and by the time I get them to connect to a website and get the screenshare running, they'd rather I just setup an appointment to meet with them in person. The Copilot Classic pricing structure though could work well for allowing me to answer any questions that take less than 15-20 minutes remotely and reserve onsite appointments for the bigger issues.

I'll still have to give it a try with a few of my more tech savy clients and see if we can't make it work. Thanks for the suggestion.

Unfortunately the pricing plans for LogMeIn and TeamViewer are setup for enterprise customers. I understand it might not be worthwhile for them to deal with smaller customers, but I'd love to find a product for less than $50 per month (preferably $5-25 a month). But I am not an expert on the costs of running the services that LogMeIn or TeamViewer offer, so maybe that's not possible.

I've used Teamviewer a few times, but I found it cumbersome compared to LogMeIn. I'll have to check it out further.

I'm also looking for something that can be used commercially, that doesn't cost a ton. I've looked at both Teamviewer's and LogMeIn's licenses in the past and found them unmanageable for some of my situations.

Anyone have suggestions for an alternative? I haven't ever found a product that works as consistently and seamlessly (without having to fight firewall issues).

Edit: I should add that I'm willing to pay for a service, but most of the options I've seen are for enterprise customers, not individuals with a few clients.

Well they do have a live chat on those two pages. Might as well make use of it! Or you could contact their live chat provider and mention the copying. They might care.