Who Wants to Fight EverQuest?

Members of the ISP-Marketing list discuss dealing with modem hogs, such as EverQuest fans, who stay online for eight or even sixteen hours per day.

[February 15, 2002]

On the ISP-Marketing list in January, BL queried,

"I think it's a mistake to market to, or even allow, system hogs. Anyone want to argue?"

CW agreed that it's a problem, but wasn't sure what to do about it:

"I have the same issue: I have a 150-hour limit on all my customers, but I'm starting to get a lot of users who are going over that. What do you do?

BL explained his method of knocking off the hogs:

"We keep track of daily usage, make a weekly report out of it, then send them an email that says they have to stop hogging. After that, we watch the daily hours. If they hit 16 hours during our prime time (7 to 10 PM), then we turn them off until 10 PM. If it still continues, we tell them they can either leave or pay our dedicated 24/7 price."

Others contended that it all balances out in the end:

[RL scoffed] "This is ridiculous: these people account for less than one percent of all users. You're tying up human resources to monitor usage and drive business away? What a waste!"

[RK agreed] "I make money on every customer, even if they use 600 hours a month."

BL suggested it's always worthwhile to keep an eye on usage:

"The typical ISP's comment about system hogs is, 'Hey, it all comes out in the wash.' But many ISPs are still losing money, some are breaking even, and I don't know of any that are paying for a mansion on the hill. In our case, eliminating the real hogs allowed us to move our modem ratio from 7:1 to 10:1. That reduced our cost by $1.50 per month per user. On his way out the door, one of the hogs, an EverQuest user said, 'I'm going to tell all my friends, and you'll lose them all.' Apparently, he did, because five of our worst hogs canceled the next day, and we celebrated."

—End