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Comment by ehnto | Hacker News Reader

Regardless of the pricing, the onus is still on the customer to understand the service they are using in my opinion.

If I go to the gym and drop 100kg on myself then it is my fault for not understanding the risks, where it is reasonable to do so.

It is reasonable to expect you as a customer of the internet service to understand the service you are using and the costs involved. It really falls on no one elses shoulders.

I do agree that it tends to be over priced and the pricing structure is often confusing but I still think it's within the grasp of most to understand it.

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What the hell are you talking about? The weights are clearly labeled and you know what's up before you even attempt it. With data, not only are there multiple abstractions away from the consumer which all play in using and controlling the data used, the phone companies purposely don't provide a data cap lock in some cases. And then you get singled out and have to grovel for forgiveness. Having software metering at device level and and phone company level should be mandatory.

It's pretty much like not giving you the car speedomoter, and then the city places speed trap cameras all over the city and then after a month, you get a bill for $200 because you went over 4 times.

This business make money first mentality is pretty bonkers.

Yeah the gym analogy didn't work. My point was simply that the gym isn't responsible should you do something stupid, because there is plenty of ways to educate yourself on avoiding that.

The internet provider offers a service with certain penalties that are typically made clear enough if you read the contract. It is up to you, through whatever means you have available, to not use it in a way that gets you excess charges.

I like your speed trap analogy but I still don't think it is the ISP at fault. If you can't afford the overage and your phone has no metering then there are plans and pre paid plans available to suit that need. You are still the one signing up to the service and using it, you don't have to if you think the situation is unfair.

I don't disagree that the customer needs to be more aware, but the gym analogy doesn't quite work. The risks of dropping a 100kg weight on yourself are much more transparent than an app sneakily loading unnecessary data and not caching it.

Yeah it does seem that analogy isn't holding up. Perhaps a better analogy is monthly gas bills. It isn't immediately obvious how much running the gas hot water service will cost, but some cursory research would point you in the right direction.

None the less, it is definitely a balance of transparency and I think it is fair to ask for app vendors to properly optimoze and advertise the data usage of their apps in some way.

The weights in the gym are labelled. Mobile games are not labelled with their data usage, nor do they track it themselves (although a phone will usually track it for you).

People can understand it, but they usually don't habitually check it, resulting in surprise bills.

Definitely a fair criticism of the analogy, and I think itnis fair to ask for more transparency from app vendors. I just don't think they should be held liable monetarily.

Some angry support tickets might be warranted though!

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