Belly-Achin' in Seattle
It's tough to be a customer these days. Companies just don't seem to want them anymore.
First Verizon's CEO, Ivan Seidenberg, starts insulting his customers and probably sends the "Can you hear me now" dude running off to cry in a corner.
"Why in the world would you think your (cell) phone would work in your house?" he said. "The customer has come to expect so much. They want it to work in the elevator; they want it to work in the basement."
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2005/04/16/BUGJ1C9R091.DTL
And now meetup.com's VP of Communications, Myles Weissleder, mocks their customers their official press blog. And then after the unsurprising controversy ensues, he doesn't address it, and sends out his underlings to do damage control.
Story here and also here.
When did it become trendy to insult your customers? Is this some sort of new "tough love" marketing they're teaching in B-School nowadays?
The good news is that this has spawned a movement to create a replacement for meetup.com. It's funny, I've never used meetup.com before, but this story makes me want to contribute time and/or money towards building a replacement.
Is there a tip jar for this project? I wonder what would happen if everyone that was unhappy with meetup.com's new $19/mo contributed half that amount one-time towards building a better open-source replacement?
Posted on Sat, 23 Apr 2005 19:53 by Seni Sangrujee (2256 day(s) old)
