Best Buy Acquires Speakeasy
- 2007-03-27
- Trackback URL
- General
Well, it’s official, Best Buy is acquiring Speakeasy. I found out about this when Speakeasy sent me an email about it, being that I’m one of their customers. I can’t say I’m happy about this at all. I have a bad feeling that Best Buy is going to push Speakeasy as a solution for small businesses at the detriment of customers like myself who are just home users wanting a DSL provider that doesn’t suck.
There’s also the potential for a large increase in Speakeasy customers if Best Buy starts marketing to small businesses heavily in their stores. This is pretty much the fastest way to kill an ISP. Basically, it goes something like this:
1. There’s a great service.
2. Lots of customers start joining it because it’s so great.
3. Unable to keep up with growth, the service starts to become crappier.
4. Users get frustrated, but because the ISP is growing too fast customer service is really, really sucky.
5. Users get even more frustrated and start leaving.
6. Service isn’t so great anymore.
I saw this happen with my previous web hosting company and it was very sad indeed.
Sigh, I guess we’ll have to wait and see what happens.
3 Comments:
what.
how the fuck did speakeasy think that it would be a good idea to sell out?!
that is RETARDED.
speakeasy was the bomb.
Well I can see why they did it. Small ISPs have been on the way out for years. Speakeasy is probably worried that if they don’t try to become a major player in the small business internet market, somebody else will and they’ll be left in the dust. I’m sure they already face a ton of competition from the cable and phone companies for this segment. Teaming up with Best Buy means they become much more visible. Small businesses buy software and hardware from their stores already, which means it’s a trusted source for IT solutions.
It was also a privately held company that weathered the dot bomb, which means the owners (founders?) are cashing out for $100 million.
I’m just worried the service is going to go downhill because of rapid growth or because of cost cutting driven by the corporate need to appease stockholders. I like that I can call support and get somebody competent who speaks fluent English and is working just down the street in Seattle. If Speakeasy loses that, I might as well just start dealing with the bullshit of Qwest or Comcast for half the price.
Dude, that sucks. Best Buy has just about the worst customer service of any such company. They are actively suspicious of their customers. This does not bode well for Speakeasy.