bolete wrote:Wrinkles wrote:For example, newsdemon and thundernews are slyck recomended, Ngroups offers the same service through the same set of servers, at more than half the price! If newsdemon and Thundernews are so great, surely Ngroups must be the same caliber right, or is it just because newsdemon paid for Slyck to say they are the best? If I pay a bit, can I be Slycks #1 Poster?

Either way, it is misleading to the user who wants to learn or the new user to Usenet.
Well...here goes.
Because NGROUPS is here today but might not be here tomorrow.
For which reason do you single us out as not being here tomorrow? We have been in business longer than any of those other providers mentioned.
bolete wrote:Because the sites you mentioned provide a better overall experience than Ngroups.
Such as us not having a blog, or what?
bolete wrote:Because the little things matter. Things like actually updating your site with actual English and accurate math. Example from Ngroups:
"Our servers carries almost all active newsgroups on the usenet. The retention for binaries is up to 424 days and GROWING towards 400+ days!!!"
That is a special case, because a couple of key persons handling the updates of the web site has been off work due to serious illness for about a month. It should be updated within a day or two.
Had it been something that really affected the services, it would have been taken care of immediately.
bolete wrote:Because both those sites offer a free news reader and Ngroups does not.
In our experience most users prefer their own newsreaders, and don't want to sponsor those few who may want a free one. That makes the prices more fair, since you don't have to pay for anything you don't use.
bolete wrote:Because Ngroups does not offer live support.
No, we don't. But our median response time for support tickets are less than 25 minutes, and we rather offer lower prices than waste money on live support which is only used a couple of times a day.
bolete wrote:Because Ngroups is not half the price like you say it is.
Our current specials are $9.99 per month for unlimited (the "Octoberfest" special), and since a year back we're offering a quarterly subscription for $29.99
bolete wrote:Because Ngroups uses some random third party payment processor that I do not know if I can trust with my CC data. If you can not get your OWN merchant account and process your OWN credit card transactions then should I do business with you?
CCDeb isn't a third party processor. It's our own in house system, developed to serve a number of services we offer, not only newsgroups. Originally we planned to act as a 3:rd party processors for other services too, but that's currently on ice.
bolete wrote:Off the top of my head, those are things that both those sites do, that is also done by Giganews and a few other "top" providers.
FYI, Giganews didn't update their site for a long time (many months) updating their retention when it was LOWER than they claimed, so they aren't exactly without fault either.
-Goran