It's not, but consumers tend to insist on paying the same price no matter where. There used to be US carriers who offered rate plans with a low price in major metro areas, with a surcharge added for use in rural areas. The product made sense to me, but they ultimately didn't last long.
I think it's similar to the psychology of choosing to pay $50/mo for a 15GB/mo rate plan in order to ensure you never pay an overage charge, when you could do $30/mo for a 5GB/mo plan but get dinged $15 for an extra GB every other month. Big picture, we're talking $600 per year vs $450 per year, but that's not how human psychology works. Instead, we react to those six extra gigabytes costing $15 apiece, and choose to instead buy a bunch of gigabytes we won't use because the lower unit price gives us warm fuzzy feelings.
The numbers are (slightly) made up, but the situation isn't: My partner and I compulsively re-do this calculation in our heads 5 or 6 times a year, every time we get zinged with an overage charge and have another conversation about changing our rate plan. We know it's a waste of time, but we do it anyway, because dark patterns are powerful tools of manipulation.
Comments
It's not, but consumers tend to insist on paying the same price no matter where. There used to be US carriers who offered rate plans with a low price in major metro areas, with a surcharge added for use in rural areas. The product made sense to me, but they ultimately didn't last long.
I think it's similar to the psychology of choosing to pay $50/mo for a 15GB/mo rate plan in order to ensure you never pay an overage charge, when you could do $30/mo for a 5GB/mo plan but get dinged $15 for an extra GB every other month. Big picture, we're talking $600 per year vs $450 per year, but that's not how human psychology works. Instead, we react to those six extra gigabytes costing $15 apiece, and choose to instead buy a bunch of gigabytes we won't use because the lower unit price gives us warm fuzzy feelings.
The numbers are (slightly) made up, but the situation isn't: My partner and I compulsively re-do this calculation in our heads 5 or 6 times a year, every time we get zinged with an overage charge and have another conversation about changing our rate plan. We know it's a waste of time, but we do it anyway, because dark patterns are powerful tools of manipulation.