They decided that they are the moral police and will directly fine customers for being mean on the internet or doing anything else they alone decide they don't like.
Sounds like I prime example of Moral Hazard where people would justify shitty behavior because they pay for it. It's also more difficult to ban people in one way or another because they are paying customers now.
And that's how they like it, extreme "techno-authoritarianism". Making as hard as possible to appeal decisions or access higher management, and the facade of customer service is usually into ignoring or gaslighting customers to the point of sadism.
They're selling a service that people are required to buy. It should be no surprise that the equilibrium reached is "be as consumer hostile as possible without violating the letter of the law enough to get told to stop"
With the intent to disrupt business. They can be easily sued for this practice. This isn't a consumer doing so, this is a company having their employees vehemently attack a competitor.
Don't be surprised when that happens. Entire websites sent as a single PNG, or Widevine increasingly determining how/whether you view content. It didn't have to be this way.
You can frame this as civil disobedience against duress, or attack a strawman of morality (which I never brought up). It's not that complicated or subjective. It's a business transaction. I'm saying if you don't like the store, don't patronize it. You're saying that if you don't like the store's prices or how they do business, then you get to take the goods without paying.
That's not the reason. The reason is that they can bullshit you and get away with it.
I sometimes wonder why isn't there a huge fine specifically for corporations trying to avoid their responsibilities by bullshiting customers. It should be in hundreds of thousands per incident.
Because they do that and they feel free to do that and you can't punish them much for doing that. The worst case for them, they actually do their job.
I can understand why they do this, sort of, but I can't understand how they have this mindset in the first place.
Imagine if they let criminals run riot through their stores, on the theory that they're in the business of selling meat and potatoes to everyone in the UK, not of policing stores. Well, it's true, but putting their customers at risk is wrong and bad for business.
No, this web site nonsense hasn't been bad for business... so far. I wouldn't be surprised if a major breach would change that in a hurry, though.
see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33062320 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32945147 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33151975 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33136147 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33134249 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32980157
tldr: dumpster fire of a company, don't hold assets in a PayPal account and I wouldn't even add long-term payment methods.
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