Especially those at the pinnacle that’ve lost touch with their customers.
I’ve blogged about it before.
Here is how platforms die: first, they are good to their users; then they abuse their users to make things better for their business customers; finally, they abuse those business customers to claw back all the value for themselves. Then, they die.
Source: Pluralistic
I’ve just learned that Amazon Kindle killed the book loaning feature… Something they initially used as a selling point when I got my first Kindle in 2017 (or whenever it was).
I’ve spent about an hour on the phone with 4 (!) Amazon support reps to find a solution (tl;dr: there are none, but they recommend one of the following three options: 1/ share your Amazon account/password with whoever you want to loan your book to, 2/ add the person to your household (never mind you can only have 2 adults in your household), 3/ buy the books again).
As I told them none of these options realistically worked (and are not a solution to the problem) I asked for a gift voucher (to re-purchase the books I wanted to loan to a friend) which they initially said were unable to do, and eventually admitted were able to do, but refused to do because they felt they offered workable solutions: “you can just purchase them again”. Sigh.
It is a disheartening reality that companies often take a turn towards evil once they hit a certain size. Lose touch with reality.
The initial promises of exceptional service and genuine customer care gradually fade away. Instead, the focus shifts to maximizing profits, leaving customer satisfaction behind. Shareholders exert pressure, prioritizing returns on investment over the long-term relationship with customers.
Don’t trust corporates.
We’ve turned the world into a place where we don’t actually own anything. SaaS offers ease of access (streaming, cloud, etc), but if consumers are at the whims of corporates to turn features on and off, give or take away access, something is wrong.
