Why Do Technology And Media Companies Hate Consumers?

from the they're-out-to-get-us dept

It's bad to piss off your users. Yet, technology and media companies are increasingly looking for ways to piss off their users by making things more difficult and harder to use. Of course, they're doing this all in the name of profits. It's a short term solution that is more likely to hurt in the long term. Pissing off your users is never going to be good for business, because consumers will go elsewhere. The article mainly talks about Microsoft's new "desperation" pleas in Windows XP to get people to sign up for Passport, as well as the new activation scheme. They also talk about (of course) the music industry. Both of these examples show companies trying to restrict what their customers can do - making those customers upset and angry. This doesn't seem like a smart business move...
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  • identicon
    Oliver Wendell Jones, 24 Oct 2001 @ 1:25pm

    And it seems to get worse as we get close to the e

    My DSL ISP has just recently decided to: a) Increase monthly rates b) Reduce my connection speed (actually, Rhythms went out and the company they switched me to is much slower than what I had, but the price still went up!) c) Put an arbitrary speed cap of 128 kbps per user on the news-server and a 20 Mbps total cap on the news-server, so if lots of people are accessing it simultaneously it is unbelievably slow. Then, on top of this, they sent me an e-mail about a new promotion where in I should try and convince my friends and family to sign up with them. I honestly believe it's a ploy to try and increase profits before the end of the year so they can maximize their bonus potential.

    link to this | view in chronology ]


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