Randall Paul Jenkins, Esq. » Blog Archive » 132.5 Years Of Free Internet.

So Kyle recently informed me, and then the world (via blogdom) about Charter’s “Internet For Life” auction. You can read his thoughts at his blog, they are not kind to Charter, nor the people bidding. If you dig into the rules about said contest, you find fun tidbits like; if Charter sells their service after 3 years you get no refund (Charter is 19 Billion in debt and fielding bids for the company), the winner must pay the full amount within 48 hours of being notified on April 2, the award cannot be sold, transferred, or willed upon death. Recently the auction ended, and the winning ~~idiot~~ bidder was announced.

$71,540.00

No that’s not in Roubles, Pesos, or some other weird other foreign currency, that is USD my friends. So let’s be straight about this, someone just pre-paid 2008 rates for 132.5 years of internet service? Now that might be cool if he is like supplying free internet to his entire town or something, but I’m sure it’s just for some huge Georgia mansion in the country. How brilliant of a scheme was this by Charter? 70 grand of capital straight into the bank.

One of my professors once told me in 1998 that if you save $50 a month starting at age 18, you will be a millionaire by 40. In a related note, I would like to tell the winning bidder of the “Charter For Life” promotion, that by my calculations, if he/she would have put the money in savings, in merely half of those 132.5 years he/she could have owned Canada*.

*Figure is estimated off 1998 “become a millionaire” numbers, average inflation versus interest rate figures and the estimated 2008 worth of Canada being 2.3 million dollars.

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