In Customer Service Workshop that I use to teach, we use to discuss the "old ways" of customer service. You know, when something broke, you called a service person who came and fixed it. You use to have your TV, stereo, washer and dryer, etc. FIXED. You use to know where to go and knew who was working on your consumer products. We use to say that consumer items were getting so cheap and services so expensive, that we were turning into "disposable" society. It has just become cheaper to buy another one than to have one fixed. When was the last time you saw a TV Repair shop? Remember back before the "geek squads", when every town had a computer repair center?
Anyway, I went to Wally World today to buy another ink cartridge for my printer. The cartridges were $42 a piece (I needed both the color and the black). A brand new printer with both cartridges was $30. Let's see, $84 for 2 printer cartridges or $30 for a whole new printer....Let me do the math.
You know, I sold my netbook to a driver over in Angola for $300 and 9 bottles of gin. Well, I came home and bought a full sized Compaq laptop for $400 and a new printer for $30. So for $430, I have a whole new system. It was only a year or two ago, I couldn't have even thought about it for less than $2000.
How times have changed and we have turned into a disposable consumer society.
(Oh yeah, I brought the printer home on a Valk, so it is Valk related).
