And Yet Another Entitled Freebie User

[Dips]

It's been my experience that out of all the entitled behavior among our customers, the ones who take it to the highest level are those using our freeware and, thus, they haven't paid for anything.

I don't post about them often because their entitlement falls into depressingly similar patterns.

But every now and then one of them will just surprise me with something different.

Like today I got an email from a freebie user who asked about printing from Windows 7.

When I gave my standard speech that: 1. That particular free product isn't supported on Windows 7 yet and 2. As the download notice (which everyone ignores like a sign in a store) says, we don't provide direct tech support on our free products.

But I was nice and I told him where to get tech support.

Apparently that wasn't good enough. He responded by declaring that my reply made no sense since he was able to use it on Windows 7 before.

And he capped it off by naming a competitor and threatening to go with their product.

What makes that amusing is that particular competitor doesn't have ANYTHING for free. His cheapest paid product doesn't even have the main feature he is using in our free product.

And the cheapest product that WILL do what he wants costs about $625.

[Kristev]

Justice. Just plain justice.

[Marmalady]

And poetic.

[eltf177]

Why do I have the uneasy feeling you haven't heard the last from Mr. Cheap?

[Seraph]

And he capped it off by naming a competitor and threatening to go with their product.

LOL I love when they do this. It's just like "Sure, go for it. And when you have to come back to me, I want a nice apology."

[MaseMan]

"No, please don't take your $0.00 of business elsewhere! It will ruin us!"

[taxguykarl]

Why do I have the uneasy feeling you haven't heard the last from Mr. Cheap?

I don't think Dips has either--but how do you price match a freebie? Hadn't this in-DUH-vidual heard the adage about getting what you pay for?

[Kristev]

About SC's: Maybe Supergirl had it right when she said to the witch, "You treat everyone as if they were put on this earth to serve you."

[Shalom]

And the cheapest product that WILL do what he wants costs about $625.

And what makes you think he's going to pay them for it either? This sounds like the kind of guy who'd use pirated software if he can't get freeware.

And then call the company for support on it.

Or worse, call you for support on it...

[Flying Grype]

Oh yeah. We don't have any freebies but the ones I get the most support requests for are the $40 cheapie edition that does frustratingly little, and some old obsolete kiddie editions that apparently some software stores still have backstock of and are liquidating for ten bucks a pop. And these are also the customers who get the pissiest about having spent their money.

This is in contrast to our $249 and $349 professional editions. I guess the professionals take the time to do some research and figure out which software does what they want, before they blow that much dough.

[Midorikawa]

This was the case at <cable company> years ago too. The ones with just the limited basic first 12 channels were the first to call in and bitch about loss of service, and are also the ones always delinquent in payment too.

Conversely, the ones with all 3 services (cable, phone, internet) and the highest charging packages on all, all premium channels, highest speed internet, and most phone features, are basically doormats. One customer had a line get cut in a storm, but never called to tell us about it for about a month. During this time, she had no home phone, no internet, and no cable tv.