Being Good (Business)

Some businesses are inherently good for their customers. And some are bad. And here I don't mean them just making good or bad products. But rather their general attitude to either maximizing profits at all cost (including at customers' cost) or simply affording to be naturally good and protective for their customers.

And it is quite shocking to see how often very good businesses (=successful companies) simply cannot afford themselves to be good. Dealing with them is always a game and every mouse click on their web sites is a potential trap.

Digital subscription businesses are generally in this "bad for customers" category. Not looking too far the first that comes to mind is Amazon. Last year Ars Technica featured a story about their “labyrinthine” Prime cancellation process named internally Iliad, referring to Homer's epic about the long, arduous Trojan War. Prime has been super easy to enroll in and designed to be super difficult to get out of.

I personally experienced something similar with Bloomberg - clicked on a bait offer and then had super difficult time to cancel, as the only way to get out was through their call center. The agent was running through a lengthy questionnaire with me (and that was after the usual call center long waiting time). 

The FTC has now proposed the new set of rules, known as click-to-cancel. And it appears the cable companies have already designed ways around that. Supposedly customers may face unintended consequences if they want to partially cancel a service, as it actually may increase the price for remaining services.

But not all businesses are evil. Fortunately.

A good example here is Apple. The company for years has been on consumers' side. Pioneering privacy for example. Or fighting for flat Internet rates benefitting the users while dinosaurs like BlackBerry were in bed with mobile carriers. And we all know how this ended.

Apple makes it particularly easy to manage subscriptions activated through the App Store. Just go to Settings -> Media & Purchases -> Subscriptions and see what you have and cancel with a single click if there is something you no longer want.

Being a Good Business sacrifices some short term profits for long term gains. This should be obvious and sufficient to everyone to be a good business. Somehow it isn't. To the point that regulators must step in and intervene, prohibiting the predatory practices.