Speakeasy → Re: Best Buy acquires Speakeasy??!?

Here is one thing to think about, I believe it to be true, but not 100% certain. I am not pro-Best Buy nor pro-Speakeasy, heck I shop at Fry's and have Comcast, but I wanted to chime in on something that could be relevant.

Just because a larger company buys another company doesn't necessarily mean the corporate or business structure is going to change. Best Buy owns numerous other companies that you would not even suspect such as MusicLand, Future Shop, & Pacific Sales Kitchen and Bath Centers. Think of it as making trades in baseball or football. You give something up, to hopefully get something better; in the business world it's capital (or money).

Best Buy will use the Speakeasy company purchase as a product for their retail stores in the computer department to bundle packages together with their purchases. For instance, you buy a new computer, sign up with speakeasy for a year, and you save $300 off purchase. It's a marketing tool, anybody in the business world understands this.

I guess the only downside to this for the Speakeasy current customers is overselling of their service. With more and more user accounts being activated (given Best Buy does what I used as an example above), the more and more support requests that come in.

Read before you "chime in". The stated goals of the purchase - as stated by both SpeakEasy and Best Buy - has nothing to do with consumer HSI.

and small businesses will have nothing to do with Best Buy so it sounds like a real winning combination!

Yup. And when it proves to not be a winning combination? Well, you can count on Best Buy either changing things at SpeakEasy, carving it up and selling it piecemeal or disolving it altogether.

Yep. Within the year, what's left of Speakeasy's skeleton will be sold to AT&T or Verizon for considerably less than Best Buy paid.

They may sell out... err, I mean off... residential customers before that.

If the article at »www.fool.com/investing/g ··· asy.aspx is correct, BestBuy only wanted the VOIP part of Speakeasy. They may well sell off residential DSL customers if this is the case.

The lack of attention to this forum by SE is in line with this notion.

I wouldn't be surprised if this turns into another Directv DSL situation where subscribers were given only about a months notice that they were shutting down the service. I was one of them and I migrated to Speakeasy. There were signs back then that all was not right with Directv as there are now with Speakeasy. Rather than wait to be pushed out the door this time, I think I'll leave before the rush. I've been looking for a good reason to switch to bway.net...this is probably it.

I just got this email--now they're looking to push telemarketing so they can sell more VOIP lines? For shame!

At one time I had four accounts with Speakeasy and I'm down to only one and that last one is getting switched over to a competitor in a couple weeks.

It's been real...

I'm starting the process of migrating myself. I'm not in a mood for waiting for the quality of service to drop off, or to find my line has been sold to someone else. It's just too much money.

Wait! In the immediate* future future nothing will change.

*Within an hour of the time Bruce C. sent the email announcing the buyout.

I was just reading the same newsletter and I agree: Pushing telemarketing is shameless and something the old Speakeasy would never have done.