Support - Tell me more

Tell me more tell me more, like does he have a car? Actually, the interview generated from my responses is available on-line on city-search. Here is what I said:

On Tue, 26 Jan 1999, MEGAN OLESKY & MARCO MORRONE wrote:

> Hi Rudy,
> 
> I took a little virtual tour of your ISP.  My questions are brief as my
> article will end up being pretty basic.  Alas, attention spans are not
> what they used to be.  Here are the questions:
> 

> I know that your service is $15 per month for unlimited access, but do
> you also offer any limited, metered rates?
What you are getting at, really, is that there are cheapskates out there.
I'll swing any type of deal presented to me as long as it isn't too much
work on my end.  


> What is the set-up fee?
$10, however if you use the on-line form (which requires information such
as telephone number, etc) I'll waive it.
[ I bought a bunch of new equipment and no longer waive the setup fee. ]
> 
> Do you support 56k modems?
No, but I plan to if there are enough paying customers who want it.  50
people would kick me into buying some digital lines.  Right now, I have
33.6k modems.
[ As of September 2000 - MonkeyBrains has 56K modems ]

> Do you offer access to all the newsgroups?
I recommend http://www.dejanews.com/ to my customers.
[ MonkeyBrains offer whatever is supplied by my upstream provider.  
  Customers need to set their news host to : news.monkeybrains.net ]
 
> Can you purchase e-mail addresses or aliases in addition to the one that
> comes with the account?
Sure.  One time fee of $5 for an alias.  Since it is supposed to be one
person per account, I do not offer multiple email boxes.  Many email
clients don't either.  What people should do is set up a filter in their
email client to sort out messages to their alias.  If they can't figure
that out, they shouldn't need an alias in the first place. 

> About how many customers do you have right now?  Any idea what your
> modem to user ratio is?  Do any of your customers have problems with
> busy signals?
About 14 people on the lan and about 6 dial-up customers.  I have 16
modems, so there are never busy signals.  Really, I need to hire a
business minded person to scrap up another 50 dial-up customers.
[ The 100 customer mark was broken circa August 2000 - now
I have 48 56K modems, and still no busy signals ]

> How long does it take to set up the account?
Anywhere from 10 minutes to 24 hours, depending on when I read my
"sign-me-up" email during the day.
 
> Your service is clearly geared toward those who need minimal tech
> support.  What do you offer them in return for their "DIY"ishness?
50 whopping Megs of disk space.  I want people to set up interesting web
sites on my servers. How come you don't have a website at
http://www.magiclink.net/~monkey?
[ Also, very solid service.  And nightly backups of user data
in case a server were to fatally crash.  Many ISPs don't do this. ]
 
> Do you offer any tech support via phone?
If I'm in the MonkeyBrains office, I love to chat on the phone.
Otherwise, email is much better.  Email responses can be posted on the
site, so others don't have to ask me questions.  Really, I believe an ISP
should provide connectivity, and you should depend upon friends, books,
and lastly the web to solve tech problems.

> What are some of your other "home-grown ideas" that have or have not
> worked?
I tried to spur my community into cleaning the street once a week when the
Street Sweeper comes by.  I live at Webster & Haight, and the street gets
real grungy during the week.  On Thursday mornings, I used to get up and
sweep all the trash on the sidewalks into the street... After a few
months, I gave into the tides of filth.


> On your website you write that this is a "fun project".  Does this mean
> you don't plan to make any money? 
Money is not my main goal.  I do freelance web work to make money.
Running an ISP is fun - hopefully I'll get customers who make monkeybrains
a site to check out!
  
> How long have you been in business?
Since December 1998, I've been taking customers.  As a freelancer, I've
been in the web world for 3 years.

Rudy
rudy@monkeybrains.net