Hi everyone, thanks for all your feedback on this. We’re taking these thoughts on board and I've already started to talk to people here about improvements based on this discussion.
Our plan is to have this initial rollout, and then to refine it once we know a bit more about how people are using their goodybags abroad under the new system. We want to make sure we’re not running before we can walk. That review is coming in September, when we’ll know more about how people have been using it and where we can make more changes to benefit people.
I’ll personally be kicking off the consultation on that nearer the time so that we can make sure community feedback is a major part of this analysis. I imagine by then some of these early thoughts will have condensed into something really solid, with the added context of the understanding of how it’s been working for a few months. I know I can rely on all of you to refine your thoughts and articulate them well so I’m looking forward to that.
I know this isn’t ideal for people who are going to areas that have increased in price, and I wish we didn’t have to do that if I’m honest. Unfortunately the costs just don’t add up otherwise. It’s a very delicate balancing act between how much benefit people get and whether it’s something we can sustain. One thing we looked at is introducing a new roaming pricing tier, for example, but the development time that would have taken would have put us past our June implementation deadline. That’s something we want to focus on when we do that review.
There are no easy decisions when it comes to a big change like this, unfortunately, but of all the scenarios we looked at that we could implement, this is the one that benefits the most people. That's why it's in the cheaper Rest of World tier (we call it Zone A) - we don't ever want to charge more than necessary. A big part of it is that doing it this way means that we could keep our goodybags at the price that they are. We wanted to steer well clear of the concern lots of people had about those prices having to rise, especially since it happens too often in the mobile industry. We wanted to protect that, because goodybags are the thing the vast majority of members rely on and use every day.
Thanks,
Steve
