Re:FTC Says AT&T Has Misled Millions of Consumers with ‘Unli...
by anigbrowl on Tuesday October 28, 2014 @03:55PM
(#8523187)
They try to actively create worse experiences for their customers.
No, of course they do't. They try to create revenue-maximizing opportunities for themselves at the expense of their customers - although many non-geek customers may even like these siloed, suboptimal applications for want of a better understanding of how they could be using their devices. Nobody deliberately sets out to make their product worse, that's a good way to lose customers to the competition. IT's an unwanted side-effect of trying to extract more revenue from each customer.
This doesn't preclude the companies from being greedy, negligent, compromising customers' security and so on. I agree that the effect of their policies is to create worse customer experiences. But to assume that their underlying motivation is make you unhappy is silly.
In gneral you'll be much happier if you stop worrying about why people do stuff like this and just learn to firmly insist on what you want, eg 'I purchased this unlocked phone because I do not like extra apps. Please sell me a SIM card and sign me up for a month-to-month service plan that I can opt out of any time. If you try to upsell me I'm going to leave and go to your competitor's store.'
I do appreciate how annoying and stressful you find this. I'm not American either and intensity of sales tactics in the US consumer space is culturally alien to me, but competitive contractualism seems to be regarded as the keystone of individual economic freedom in the US, vs the more paternalistic approaches that prevail in some other places.
No, of course they do't. They try to create revenue-maximizing opportunities for themselves at the expense of their customers - although many non-geek customers may even like these siloed, suboptimal applications for want of a better understanding of how they could be using their devices. Nobody deliberately sets out to make their product worse, that's a good way to lose customers to the competition. IT's an unwanted side-effect of trying to extract more revenue from each customer.
This doesn't preclude the companies from being greedy, negligent, compromising customers' security and so on. I agree that the effect of their policies is to create worse customer experiences. But to assume that their underlying motivation is make you unhappy is silly.
In gneral you'll be much happier if you stop worrying about why people do stuff like this and just learn to firmly insist on what you want, eg 'I purchased this unlocked phone because I do not like extra apps. Please sell me a SIM card and sign me up for a month-to-month service plan that I can opt out of any time. If you try to upsell me I'm going to leave and go to your competitor's store.'
I do appreciate how annoying and stressful you find this. I'm not American either and intensity of sales tactics in the US consumer space is culturally alien to me, but competitive contractualism seems to be regarded as the keystone of individual economic freedom in the US, vs the more paternalistic approaches that prevail in some other places.