Quote:
Originally Posted by eschwartz
That's not an Amazon thing, that's a business thing. As has already been said, it is pretty much the definition of poor: that you can't afford things. It is hardly within the scope of a business to provide things to people who can't afford it, that is what we call welfare.
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Most of the customers fit in the category of not being able to afford those little extra things though. And if it weren't for all those little customers who buys things stores wouldn't be able to offer extra perks to the rich customers. It's not the rich customer who spends several $100 bucks once or twice a year who keeps the doors open, but the average person who spends $5-$10 here and there multiplied times thousands who do so. I don't know if anyone will go the route of trying to actually prove that raising the price for AP is discriminatory or not, but I'm sure there are those who will feel they are being cheated of the chance to have it as it will be too expensive either for them to get or for them to keep. A program named Boxee went in much the same way a few yrs back. The developers used to offer their program as a downloadable computer program that a person could use to watch media either on the computer or online, and they received feedback from the users on how it did and what problems they had in order to help make it a better program. Then they started to develop a set top box form of the program. Then they decided that it was too much work to keep the version for computer up and running and pretty much abandoned the users who had the computer download version. Not an exact example but similar in that some people got left behind. For that matter mobipocket (which is owned by Amazon) did something of the sort as far as support for the 1st ereader I had (Franklin ebookman). They decided to stop supporting it which made any new books I'd buy from them unable to be opened on the device. Hmm. seems to be an Amazon habit forming.