If you provide a free service should you care if it works? 4

[GreenTeeth]

I have just got to a point with my hotmail account where I cannot get to my address book on account of the server being too busy. I know that it is a free service, and that it is very kind of microsoft (with a campital m I spose) to provide such a marvelous service for us, but surely if you provide a service, you are obliged to make it run smoothly.

I admit this is a bit of a selfish rant, however microsoft (with a capital m of course) have built this service up to the point that people rely on it now. I have no email else where, and even though I spent years trying to stay away from email and computers in general, it comes to a point where it is necessary.

I kind of assume though that Microsoft have some money, and if there is any company who could stay one step ahead of the game they would. You would have thought, that what with all the moaning and slating that Microsoft do get, surely now that they have the money they have isn't it time to start ironing out some of the little things that actually wind people up on a personal level.

I wonder what it is about money and that makes you care less. If the money is coming in, **** em if it doesn't work. It is a bizarre psychology.

I shall go now, and log on later yeah?

 

[skiflyer]

peter

You've confused me... first you mention that you can take any product pair, and split it by price, and you get more out of the pricier one... then you go on in the next post to say of course that's not true, pricing is a tricky model.

As an aside... As far as answering why similar things vary widely in price, alot of people can answer that rather fluently, and most of us here can probably toss in a few suggestions which would mostly cover it. Advertising and branding being two examples of that.

back to the point
I agree that it's a very tricky model, revenue doesn't always come right in from the pricing. Let's ignore hotmail and look at yahoo mail, there's a free offering and a pay offering. Same with mySQL. Offer it up "free" to hook and test and do all sorts of things... then get enough money to make the venture profitable somewhere else.

The ethics of whether or not it works... well I think the ethical answer is pretty simple... you should care, as the old adage says anything worth doing is worth doing right. However, as has been more or less stated in this thread, that does not make you liable.

So, to answer the original question with my opinion... the creator should definately care that their free service works and works well... ethically speaking, they should only be advertising the parts which do work properly (otherwise they're lying). The user, should not expect a whole lot of recourse if the system doesn't work.

that all said...
What about a system like hotmail or the free yahoo? It doesn't cost us any $$, but they're selling those email addresses to advertisers, and they're selling screen space to advertisers such that they get money every time I view an add. This is a minor inconvenience to most of us so we still call them "free", but the company is making some money, does this change things in anyones mind?

-Rob

 

[PCLine]

lol, I am sorry you didn't take my replies in the spirit they were intended.

Unfortunately, I am unable (perhaps unwilling ;-) )to help you make the link between satellite tv and politics.

Sorry that my first para was a little "obscure" in its meaning. Though I would prompt you that you compared a trabant with a BMW. As to your confession, I applaude you. Yet your assumption of my ability is somewhat unfounded. I too like a bargain.

At least we agree that pricing is incredibly complex and involves more than economies of scale.

And in your final point I think you will find that you have accussed me of something I haven't done.

All the best.

 

[Tarwn]

I apologize for misunderstanding the subject of the thread, I thought we were talking about free products/services and whether they should care if it works with MS Hotmail as an example, not the subject.

Then again I didn't see anything political in Peter's food and satelite for free line either...

In response to the two points raised earlier,
1) They "promised" the public free e-mail that is in competition with other free and pay for versions. If they are not competing why do you suppose they are offering it?
I have never seen it said that Hotmail is supposed to be competing with anyone, unless there is some sort of silent competition between them and other free email providers, and the basis of that, I would suppose, would be advertising and marketing potential.

2. People have subscribed to a service that they are using for correspondence and find that they cannot access the mails that are being sent to them and that is down to MS and no one else.
Err...source? Statistics?
I have a hotmail account, as far as I know I get mail more reliably at that account than I do from my private ISP, who I have to email on a monthly basis when I find out mail is not getting to me (again) because they have altered their email filtering rules (again). My work account is mostly reliable, maybe a little less than Hotmail. My mail.com account doesn't seem to have any problems, which puts it on par with hotmail. My private domain mail doesn't miss anything, putting it also on par with hotmail.


This all reminds of the big outcry that occurred when they decided they weer going to start cleaning out trash bins. People assumed that since they had been storing stuff in the trash for so long that Hotmail was then responsible for allowing them to do it, then when Hotmail realized it was happening the set up a periodic cleaning for them reuslting in a huge outcry from people that had lost important documents that were in the trash folder. I don't remember what happened but I can only hope the idiots that kept important information in the trash bin didn't win a court case, we don't need to award stupidity with money.

-Tarwn

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[Tarwn]

oooh, that wsn't a messy run-on sentance

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Get better results for your questions: faq333-2924
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[GreenTeeth]

Skiflyer, damn fine point you have just brought out there, in essence Hotmail is not free as such, as you pay with your privacy. They do ask you quite a lot of personal questions in order to sign up (as to whether you answer truthfully or not is up to you, but personnaly I think it is one big mistake to do so both my hotmail accounts are registered in other countries). This also to a point that came to mind when reading one of PCLine's posts:

2. People have subscribed to a service that they are using for correspondence and find that they cannot access the mails that are being sent to them and that is down to MS and no one else.

And that was my original point. In this case, Hotmail have provided a communication, and people want communications to work. Communication it this day and age, is vital as the world gets closer and closer because it is break down in communication that is (in my mind) one of the saddist problems of the world, and causes more arguements and misunderstanding than anything else. And to that I think there is an ethical and a moral obligation. I think it matters not a jot whether you pay for it or not it should work - which hotmail did and very effectively up until recently.

By the way, food can be free if you know what you're looking for and where to look for it. Satalite telly is rarely free and good job too, otherwise I'd probably get very fat and very sad in a very short space of time.

Regards
Rob

 

[GreenTeeth]

Sorry tarwn, just read your post now, my original point was about free services, and using Hotmail as an example. I hope no-one is missing the point, but it doesn't feel to me like they are.

 

[petermeachem]

'first you mention that you can take any product pair, and split it by price, and you get more out of the pricier one'

Didn't say that. I said 'It depends a great deal on how and how often you use the product. I have a £30 Black and Decker drill which is fine cos I don't use it that often. If I were a plumber and used a drill all the time I'd get a £200 one.'

If you drive 3000 miles a year get a trabant, if 30000 get a bmw.

Price is important. We (the missus and me), have a tendency to pick the cheapest to do jobs around the house. We recently got the cheapest carpenter to fix the end of the conservatory. He was complete rubbish. The cat would have done better. The most expensive is probably overcharging. The cheapest is probably rubbish.

There is a LOT more to pricing than 'Advertising and branding'. This is a good read

http://pf.fastcompany.com/magazine/68/pricing.html

MS should care that Hotmail works, but only because they have their name on it, and then only presumably to the standard they use for their other products.

http://www.therockalltimes.co.uk

http://www.robotwisdom.com/

 

[sleipnir214]

To quote Walt Disney: "I love Micky Mouse more than any woman I have ever known."

I agree that even if the service is free, the provider has an obligation to insure the service is the best the provider can offer. However, the provider's duty is to his paying customers takes precedence. Those profit streams are what makes it possible to provide the free service.

If I have a choice between two services of equal functionality, one for-pay and the other free, I tend to choose the for-pay site, if for no other reason than I've found that an ass-chewing goes a lot further if you're a paying customer.



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TANSTAAFL!

 

[skiflyer]

peter
Obviouslly alot more goes into pricing than those two. That's why I offered them up as examples of the parts, not as the completeness.

As far as your clarification on your belief of value for the dollar, we'll just have to disagree (and further I'm not sure how it differs from my rephrasing)... and I'll say that in my opinion you'll waste alot of money that way on certain items, and that's both in the direction of over paying for an expensive item, and dealing with the hassles of a "cheap" (not necessarily inexpensive) item.

sleipnir
With many services I couldn't agree more... I think several times the free solutions are basically above reproach so I wouldn't pay for them based on that logic alone. i.e. mySQL for non-critical applications... I'll gladly pay because I think they're doing a good thing, but I don't feel I'm gaining anything.

Anyway, I'm rambling....

 

[sleipnir214]

skiflyer:
MySQL is a product, not a service. Do not take my comments farther than I specifically limited them.

Or are you referring to a free MySQL hosting service?

Want the best answers? Ask the best questions:

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[skiflyer]

sleipnir
Good point. That distinction is subtle and important.

-Rob

 

[jrbarnett]

Carrying on with this argument:
Do you think that Microsoft should stop new people signing up for Hotmail if it will improve services for current users, rather than increase the number of accounts and therefore messages and storage requirements?

 

[pmonett]

As I stated (way far) above, MS is far ahead where money is concerned. I do not think that MS is interested in making the service better. There is no competition worth it on the free market, meaning that as long as there are far more people signing on than going away, it is good enough.
Realistically, any company that sells much more than it has returns is going to keep things as they are for as long as they can, right ? I'm talking about the production line, not R&D.
As has been also pointed out here, MS is selling addresses and other info. For that, they need newcomers. It would be contrary to the revenue stream to stop the newcomers and make service better, which they do not need to do anyway seeing as there is not a massive depletion in the number of subscribers.
We all know "if it works, don't fix it". The trick here is knowing that, for MS, Hotmail is working fine since new subscribers are signing on all the time.
Why fix it ?

On the "software should be free" dept. :
I do not believe software should be free. Not as a basic rule anyway. Proposing free software is a right, just like taking on a hitchiker. You do so out of goodwill, that is the point. It is a good thing that there are people willing to code out of pure goodwill, and it is a good thing that there are companies finding paying customers for code they sell.
I do however believe that all software, free or not, should be developed with stability and performance in mind. Code should be clearly grouped and referenced for future improvements. That the code is freely available or not is irrelevant, as long as the guy saddled with the job of modifying it has access to it.
It is unbelievable that so many buffer overflow errors (to pick just one tiny example) have found their way into all kinds of products at all levels of communication, practically whatever the provider or the software. It is quite sad that such basic issues of coding and compilation were not strangled from the beginning by consciencous developers with a will to do the "right thing".
[satire]But I'm sure there was a manager hovering somewhere near the door, popping in every five minutes to make sure the product would get out the door on time for him to get the raise he was promised.[/satire]

 

[greyted]

Instead of Hotmail read Ad-ware.

What an outcry there was when people discovered there had been no updates for quite some time for this free to use product.
Indeed it was highly praised and recommended by many, even by some on this site.
Fortunately Ad-aware has now changed and functions as it should but I would bet that the majority of people use Spybot S&D instead of or along with Ad-aware.
Was the Ad-aware saga unethical? Indeed it was and that is why a lot of us changed to Spybot, although in my humble opinion Spybot is superior.

Again we recommend Spybot (free) to people who post on Tek-Tips who we think require the removal of spyware from their system.
GreenTeeth,
To answer your original point I think if you provide a free service, be it Hotmail accounts, programmes or even charity work you should care it performs or is performed correctly.
Pride in a product that functions correctly is a very good advert for a company.





Ted

"Democracy is too good to share with just anybody."
Nigel Rees.

 

[PCLine]

pmonett ~ A good answer. But your "hitch-hiker" analogy assumes a particular reason why people give rides and gives no attention to why people want rides. It also ignores the relationship between the giver and receiver once they "come together".

eg. A car driver can "dump" a hitch-hier in the middle of nowhere. The hitch-hiker can make demands of the car driver.

I'm not knocking your answer, I thought it was a good one. But when I started to look at the analogy of the driver and hitch-hiker ~ it went a long way, very fast

I do accept what you said about the driver/hitch-hiker in principle.

All the best.

 

[pmonett]

PCLine :
And where is the difference ?

If the guy who takes a hitchhiker is the coder :
- he can publish his code for everyone and still have people request new features from him.
- he can also receive hate mail if his code does something that some people do not appreciate.
- he can finally decide that the new version of the code will not be distributed and instead, he will sell the product (leaving current users stranded in the middle of nowhere)

As for the hitchhiker himself, he can publish a request for a program to do something, and wait for days, months, years, all of eternity for some coder to give him a ride and do the program he requested.
Then we're back to the above points.

I didn't think of all that when I gave the analogy, but right now I can follow it rather far and it holds together.

A stroke of luck

 

[PCLine]

Hi pmonett,
I accept what you say is true.

I was/am looking at the motivations and relationships that would exist in such a situation.

The Hitch-Hiker;
He is waiting for some help to allow him to accomplish what it is he is seeking to.

He "accepts" the offer of a lift, initially on the basis that the vehicle is going in his direction.

On this journey, the hitch-hiker is making progress, but he is also considering new options and evaluating whether his expectations are being met.

The hitch-hiker becomes disgruntled because the vehicle he is travelling in is running 10 mph slower than other vehicles.

The hitch-hiker become disgruntled beceause the vehicles needs to stop freqently to patch up water leaks, oil leaks, inflate the tyres, wash the windows and a few other bugs.

The hitch-hiker becomes disgruntled because the driver has changed the course he was taking and even though he will arrive at the destination there is going to be a major detour and hold up.

The hitch-hiker asks the driver to deliver him at a suitable (stable) platform where he can wait until another vehicle comes along to help him.

The hitch-hiker is left high and dry when the driver dumps him in the middle of nowhere despite the drivers assurances that they were getting closer to the hitch-hikers goal.

The Driver;
He is on a long journey to get from A to B.

The driver sees a hitch-hiker along the way who is holding a sign that says "B".

The driver is unsure how to get to "B" on his own and feels that the input of another may benefit him so he stops to offer a lift.

As the driver is unsure of how to get where he is going coupled with the fact that this is a new journey for him he is driving slower than the rest of the traffic because he does not want to miss any sign posts.

Because the driver is inexperienced, he does not recognise all the perils in the road nor does he understand how to fix all the bugs in his vehicle, so he has to stop frequently to patch them up.

Because the vehicle is becoming verty "buggy" the driver decides to move onto some slower roads because he doesn't want to break down in the middle of the freeway and have everyone laugh at him.

The driver becomes irritated when the hitch-hiker asks him to deviate from his course. He hates back seat drivers. Does the hitch-hiker really think he is going this way out of choice...

The driver becomes irritated when it becomes clear that the hitch-hiker wants him to make a special trip to allow the hitch-hiker to get out and cope with the problems all on his own.

The driver decides that enough is enough. He kicks the hitch-hiker out in the middle of nowhere and tells him he can't complain because he was getting a lift for free.

Conclusion;

I have spent quite some time writing the above in and amongst constant interuptions at work to find that there is no difference

ROFL, all the best pmonett,

PCLine

 

[GreenTeeth]

Here here greyted.

PCLine
eg. A car driver can "dump" a hitch-hier in the middle of nowhere. The hitch-hiker can make demands of the car driver.

This is not exactly true, but you are right it is not a good analogy.

If I pick up a hitch hiker, it will usually be because either I have some sort of empathy due to a lot of hitch hiking myself, or because I am bored. Either way, I expect my hitch hiker to talk to me, (or a better way to put it, I expect him to pay for his ride by some form of entertainment, which usually means talking) now if he does not fulfill that task, I will politely drop him off at the next convenient point.
Now if the hitch hiker makes demands on me, I will kick him out straight away. And I think I have absolutely every right to do so (anyone telling me otherwise will not get a lift from me, so please remember to put your name on your destination sign please).

So in that respect it is a bad analagy, if you hitch, you are asking for a service to be supplied, and initially offering absolutely nothing in return, if you get a lift it is a bonus but you do not have the right to make demands of your lift. As for someone like Hotmail, they are offering a service to you and effectively saying "please use, and tell all your friends" and I still maintain that on those grounds you have a right to make some demands.

 

[pmonett]

Greenteeth,

You have the right to make demands, but nothing is going to oblige MS to fulfill them. I wonder if anyone has even considered what the legal aspect is like.
I am unaware of all the intricacies of law, but it seems to me that, if you give your neighbor a hand to fix his car, and as a result you break the thing that needs to be fixed, you are not legally responsible. Justice recognizes that goodwill is sufficiently rare to not bring the wrath of law onto someone who honestly just wanted to help, even if he screwed up.
So MS is logically in that position. They just want to help, neighborly-like, for free. If they screw up, there is no way you can make demands in court.
Meanwhile, they are making money, and probably laughing at all their subscribers. Okay, I'm biased.

Now, as I said before, I personally believe that if I propose a service, I should do my best to make that service as good as I can make it. As an example, in the days of the 720K floppy disk unit, I found that my unit could have the pin detector cut without any adverse result, giving me 1.44Mb disks out of 720Kb ones.
Seeing that, a fellow student asked about it and I told him, volunteering to do the operation for him. Alas, his unit was not as versatile as mine, and the resulting clip crippled it permanently. My school friend was obviously dismayed, but I did what I deemed my duty was : I went to the shop and bought another (and they weren't a dime a dozen in those days). I had offered a service, the least I could do was uphold the terms of service.
In doing so, I went above the responsibilities the law assigns. It was a free service, I could have just said oops, and left. But no, that is not how I view a service that I propose.
Granted, the situation would not be the same for a car, but I wouldn't volunteer to help for a car since I'm a very bad mechanic. I would, however, gladly help my friends (not anybody) install watercooling for their PCs, since I have done it and know how. And if I screw up, I am prepared to replace the parts that need to be replaced. I can say that because I have a long experience in DIY on PCs, and watercooling is simple these days. I do not think I'm taking a great risk, and I will hold myself to that if worse comes to worse.
That is how I view service.
However, this is not a service I am willing to offer to the general public, only to a (very) restricted community of close friends. On a larger scale, if I take on a hitchiker that needs to go 8 or 10 kilometers father than I (or whose destination is not quite on my road), I am quite willing to do the additional distance, even if it means I get home half an hour later. Especially if it is raining.
MS has the means to make it service better. It is loosing truckloads of money on many lines, so a bit more to make their reputation better would not be a great hurt.
However, I firmly believe that the issues are being mixed up here. Hotmail is not about your mailbox, however important it may be to you. Hotmail is about MS gathering saleable data to make some profit. As I said before, as long as there are more people signing on than there are leaving, it has NO REASON to change its ways.

 

[pmonett]

PCLine:
Congratulations, I got a good chuckle out of it too.

;-)