Nick Carr manages to miss the point again, pointing to this post - which is accurate, but not relevant to the discussion:

Most people, maybe even nearly all people, do not want to enter into a relationship with the businesses who sell them things. They want the comfort of a nearly anonymous transaction, sometimes even without capable assistance. Relationships of all types that last longer than 30 minutes are hard, difficult work. Why would anyone want to engage in this everytime he buys a DVD player? Don't we all hate the fact that the cell phone companies force a 1-year relationship on us?

True enough. The problem doesn't exist when things go right; what Jeff Jarvis (and others) have been going on about is what happens when things go wrong:

• You buy a product
• The warranty says you get some kind of service when things go wrong
• You call the vendor, asking for warranty fulfillment
• The vendor, all too often, tries really hard to wiggle out of the warranty

Ed Foster has made a career out of documenting these kinds of things. It's not that we want an intimate, ongoing relationship with the people we buy from; it's that we don't want to be lied to when things go wrong. Carr seems to be ok with that - I interpret the vast majority of his posts as a tossing of his hands in the air, followed by a breathless "well, what did you expect?"

I'll tell you what I expect - I expect the terms of service to actually mean something. If you intend to never fulfill them then heck - fire customer support, drop the price commensurately, and slap a sticker on the product that reads "Sold as is". That would at least be honest.

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