Well, not sure today what to write about, but I just thought of two free services that didn’t work out properly for me recently. Today I had a Skype conference call with my team members and one of them had trouble staying in the Skype call, even so bad that basically we were not able to have a proper meeting. And yes, we were using the free version of Skype, so basically no valid reasons to complain or go anywhere. And of course it could still also be the internet connection of the team member connection having the problems that was not working properly, so also very difficult to analyze what was really the case.
Another problem I recently had was with the Google maps service, this time even with a customer site actually causing serious problems for my customer as he is a property broker and we use the free Google maps service to get the map locations of the properties. Again, I did not really know where to go, even though I did get a reply from a Google representative for the paid Google maps service. The bad thing is I never realized this problem would occur as normally this free Google maps service just works and I guess also the customer never realized we were using the free version and that there are limitations with it that could cause the service to stop.
And that’s still kind of a problem I have with ‘free’ services. In the end you have nowhere to go if the service doesn’t work, or at least you have no stable ground where to stand so you could ‘demand’ for support or solutions if something doesn’t work.
So why this subject of free services? Well, I believe in the end nothing is for ‘free’ as someone has to pay for something to work. And don’t get me wrong, there must be business models where the whole thing works out, there are business models where it works out, look at Google and Yahoo for example. And indeed Skype. But somewhere deep inside my gut feel tells me that in the end it’s not OK that things are for free, that you don’t pay for the product or the service that you use.
Or is it OK? Does the old financial system not work anymore, or not work for many of the products and services we use today? Or has it always been like this, that some products and services are over paid and some are under paid?
Anyhow, still something to explore further as this whole thing is also the background of our idea that we would like to be paid straight for the services of Inspiration for Success. Looking at the current reality people still prefer to pay for this type of website by showing advertisements on the site and by clicking on affiliate links. But is that really how we want it?
Please let me know your thoughts.