when you buy a casket while planning for your death would you imagine that after you died the casket company would change the shape of the casket to be to small to hold your corpse? when you buy a car would you expect the car maker to change the make and model the day you picked it up? these are pretty unacceptable changes aren’t they? what i don’t get is how companies can use deals or services they offer to get you to buy their product and then change the terms they are offering you. why do we accept these changes in service with a shrug of “well thats business”?


i am just plain tired of it. in one weeks time my apartment stopped doing dry cleaning, they stopped accepting packages in their office for the residents, at&t changed my phone contract, the company that insures my phone changed their contract, and a magazine i subscribed to changed their service from monthly to bimonthly. what the hell gives? first of all i think its a stroke of bad luck, but is it more then that? is our economy going south? neither of those i can answer with any certainty, but i do know for sure that when companies change their service they risk the chance of losing a customer.


so why do you care? i am willing to bet that most of you take these with a shrug and nothing more. i am willing to bet that most of you continue your service with the company without commenting or requesting change? why do you do that and how can i be so certain of these “bets”?


well the why is simple, you are lazy. ouch … sorry for slapping you so hard there. or are you just angry because the comment struck home? well maybe not you exactly, but the fact of the matter is a lot of people walk through life, never questioning anything, that is until something huge jumps up and smacks them. slowly the government changes our laws on us, for example the right to bare arms. no one really cared about it until a few kids got shot in the last few years. like everyone else i was saddened greatly by these children losing their lives. but i was angry as well, no, not at the children or even the parents, i was angry at the ostriches that popped out of the ground and said “take those guns away, people have no reason to have guns in this day and age”. so who are those ostriches i am speaking of that have their head in the ground 99% of their lives. well maybe not you, because you have read this far, but look at your neighbor, your friends, your politicians. do you see it? the long neck, and the i cannot be bothered now attitude? i bet you do …


so how else might i know. well i went to the front office of my apartment complex and asked about their canceling the dry cleaning and their no longer accepting packages. the first thing out of their mouth was “well your the first to ask, we were wondering if anyone cared”. they explained that the dry cleaners were tired of coming by and not getting any dry cleaning. i can understand that one … but then they said that the package thing, well that was an “inconvenience” to them. what? i pay rent here, to much as a matter of fact. i think i am entitled to some service other then them raising my rent each year. she didn’t seem to care and said no one else seemed inconvenienced. i was pretty steamed but i held it in. i walked back to my apartment complex and on my way in i ran into 3 different residents walking out. i stopped them and asked what they thought about the change. one said she never got packages so who cared, one said she had no idea and when i mentioned the letter we all got under the door she said she threw it away, and the final person said there was nothing he could do. pretty lame ahe … i tried getting them interested in petitioning but they just couldn’t be bothered.


so what can i do about this? well i will try and get some people to help me start a petition but if those 3 are any representative of the populace in this complex i have little hope. as for the others, i called all of them and let them know of my disapproval of their changes. i signed on with them for a reason, for a service, and by them lessening the value of their service they would be losing me as a customer when my contracts were up. sounds a bit drastic? no? i don’t think so. we have to send a message to these companies, a message that we are people and want to be treated with respect. at least give us a choice of paying more or the loss of a service with money back. there are just certain things that make business sense.


but that’s just my opinion, for what its worth …