i noticed an ever increasing trend in the IT world of money for help. companies that sell an IT product will sell you a contract to use their technical support department for any issues you might have when their product stops working. the sad thing is, we fall for it.
“hi my tape back up stopped working. i need some assistance here.”
“well im sorry sir, it appears your contract for technical support has expired. you need to give us more money in order for me to help you.”
“ok….? but it stopped working because of a security flaw in your software at the time of original purchase. so you supplied a defective product.”
“im sorry sir, your contract for technical support has expired. please insert more cash so that we may assist you.”
this is the only industry where you have to pay for problematic products for continued use. its not like you have a car that gets a flat driving down the freeway. when buying an item in the IT world, its assumed that its not going to work perfectly well. that there will be issues with it even operating normally. take for example windows vista. before its release, people were saying how it will be buggy at first so might as well wait for the first service pack to get it.
does this sound right to you?
“yes sir i want the vista dining table set, but do you know how long before the chair cover pack will be released? i hear they split when sat upon.”
if its in the IT world this would be expectable. but apply the same mentality to other products and it sounds wacky! it took a web bashing from the public for sony to drop their fee for a “non-bloat ware” version of their vaio computer sytems. i think the IT world needs to bend to resonable consumer demands like “it will work”. does that sound so harsh? i dont think so.
~adieu