jimji - 7:19 am on Jun 27, 2012 (gmt 0)

I have slowly come to realize that we have a soup line mentality at these companies that make money on the Internet.

What I mean is they view the price of 0 as enough reason to treat a "customer" with disrespect.

The soup line mentality is that it seems they don't view the price tag as simply having been set at 0 as opposed to 5 or 10 dollars / pounds / Euros and so forth. Rather, they seem to view that figure of 0 as having done some sort of great deed that needs to be rewarded from time-to-time by the customer allowing them to treat the customer like so much cattle. Brand them. Herd them onto the
truck and move them over there -- change their address, as in this latest case. Change their appearance to the outside world, also as in this latest case. If you change the email address shown to others without my okay, you have disrespected me.

If you are in a soup line THAT IS FREE. It is a handout. You do not really have any rights unless the people that made it poison you. If you don't like the taste, too bloody bad.

But something like FaceCrook or Google, or all those other folks set the price tag for us at 0 dollars / pounds / Euros and that is the price. We are still customers and deserve the respect a customer would expect if it were the brick-and-mortar world.

If for some reason Fiat were to suddenly set a 0 price tag on one of their autos and we were able to get to the front of the line and purchase that auto we would still expect to be treated just like the fella/gal last week that had to pay the normal sticker price. We would not tolerate the Fiat folks sending an employee over to our house at 1am in the morning to change the colour of the car after we "purchased" the car.

Yet, these social media types and some that provide email products at a price tag of 0 seem to think that the price being set as 0 entitles them to pour bovine excrement upon those that purchased the product at the price that was set -- 0 dollars / pounds / Euros.

And this behaviour seems to have set in for the duration, doesn't it? It appears that there is little that can be done to reverse the course of this thinking.