Well, not to put to fine a point on it, yes, I do think that charging money to make things easier is a good strategy for getting people to be my customers. This is partially informed by the fact that I charge money for software to make things easier.
People buy because the paid version is better than the free version for their purposes. If the paid version was not better than the free version, they would not buy. There is a famous pre-Internet A/B test on shareware: functional limitations beat "put out a coin cup and hope some money falls into it" by a mile.
Is that how you want your customers to look at your company?
My customers are distinguished from the poster by a few things. Principally, that they pay me money. (If my customers are looking at my company like it is a business which provides them value in return for being paid, then that is great -- we're all on the same page.)
The opinions of people who will not pay me money and are, in fact, hostile to the idea of paying money are of little concern to me. The free competitors are over yonder. They're worth what you pay for them. Enjoy.
In this case, Kodak evidently offered to store his pictures for free, then when he wanted them back because they were going to delete them, they did not make it easy to get out.
As a prospective customer, I pay attention to whether someone is going to try to get money from me for the privilege of no longer being their customer. It's not a good sign. I will probably just avoid being their customer in the first place.
People buy because the paid version is better than the free version for their purposes. If the paid version was not better than the free version, they would not buy. There is a famous pre-Internet A/B test on shareware: functional limitations beat "put out a coin cup and hope some money falls into it" by a mile.
See: http://hackvan.com/pub/stig/articles/why-do-people-register-...
Is that how you want your customers to look at your company?
My customers are distinguished from the poster by a few things. Principally, that they pay me money. (If my customers are looking at my company like it is a business which provides them value in return for being paid, then that is great -- we're all on the same page.)
The opinions of people who will not pay me money and are, in fact, hostile to the idea of paying money are of little concern to me. The free competitors are over yonder. They're worth what you pay for them. Enjoy.