Quality vs Quantity

There is no such thing as good, fast and cheap. When someone's selling you a service or a product that's supposed to encompass all these three qualities, you have to wonder why and how. When a company is selling you the same food as the store next door at half the price, you have to wonder why and how.

I know, I know, we live in times of crisis. Money is of essence and saving money is a very important priority these days. However, sometimes, saving money in short term leads to paying much much more in long-term costs.

Think of it this way: the company that sells you a product or a service exists to make profit. Despite what marketing says, that is the only purpose of existence of ANY company. Not to serve you, not to be at your disposal, but to make money. A company that does not make money is a company that goes out of business. A company that can afford to sell you something at half the price of its competitors is a company that is cutting costs somewhere. And sometimes it's important to know where.

Per example: a company offering fast and cheap Internet services. Think of how those services are offered:
- Infrastructure needs to be built. That costs money
- People need to be paid so that they can sell you the services - the people you sign the contract with.
- People need to be paid so that they can install the services - the people that bring the modem/router to your house and install it so that the Internet works
- People that process your bills when you pay them
- People that process your support requests when they come.

If the company offers extra cheap Internet services, it is rarely because the other Internet companies are greedy. It's usually because one of the costs above (or some other that I am not aware of since I don't work for such a company) has been cut significantly. How that can be done:
- Cheap infrastructure. That can lead to poor quality Internet service.
- Cheap salesmen. This rarely happens - they are paid per commission, so if they sell they make big bonuses. Assuming this is the case - this is one of the few costs that are cut that doesn't affect you once you actually bought the service.
- Cheap people in the field. That can lead to your Internet being badly installed, which leads to you spending hours on the phone with people trying to reconfigure it.
- Not enough people or badly paid people processing your bills - meaning your payment can be processed with delay if you pay online (you may be registered with missing bills, even if that is not the case) or you can spend hours in line trying to pay it, if you decide to do it personally.
- Cheap people in the support chain - this is actually a very common issue. Companies have taken to outsourcing, because Eastern countries offer cheap labor. Therefore the people there may have poor language skills - meaning that even if they know how to fix your issues, it will take them centuries to understand what those issues are. That's if companies haven't gone really cheap and even in countries that have lower salary standards they are still paying small salaries, meaning that regardless of language skills, it will not be the smartest dude that you will be speaking to. This means basically that whenever you have an Internet issue, it will be highly frustrating to resolve it.

The case above is just an example. Of course, if your Internet fails, it is frustrating but not a life and death matter. But imagine the same thing about food. Think about how a company cuts costs to lower the food prices and where those costs could be cut. Could it be that they are not respecting health standards? Imagine the consequences of that.

Think twice before buying cheap. Sometimes, it may end up costing you double.