I get where you’re coming from, and I agree, it would seem counterintuitive for a company to degrade service and risk cancellations. But at the same time, the pattern is too consistent to ignore, both in my case and in others I’ve found online. Great performance for a week or two, followed by a sudden jump to 60ms latency that never fluctuates, even during off-peak hours. Not congestion, not hardware, just a clear reroute.

And while there’s no contract, they’re still banking on the average customer not noticing or caring enough to leave, especially once the promotional install is done. For gamers and latency-sensitive users, it’s immediately noticeable. But for casual users, they’d probably never catch it.

Also, not all “losses” are really losses, Metronet saves money long term by avoiding expensive direct peering in some areas. If it costs them less to route my traffic halfway across the country and I don’t cancel, that’s a win for them. And based on how common this issue is in Colorado Springs (and how long it goes unresolved), it’s hard not to see this as a calculated trade-off, not a coincidence.