For those of us involved with customer-driven competition, this makes perfect business sense. If you -the provider- (a) cannot figure out cheaper ways to acquire consumers and (b) cannot keep your consumers by remaining fresh in your consumers eyes, then why should your products and services be a marketplace success?
Unfortunately VCs and Financing communities do not typically want easy ways for consumers to leave your company. However, at the end of the day the product and service must stand on its own merit.
Let our incredible interface and the experience you have and the "ease-of-use" keep you -Our User- with us and not the contract terms and conditions (T&Cs.) Excellent barriers to exit can only be created when one has a great product and gives the user a great experience. It cannot be done with great terms and conditions (T&C). Exercising T&C related business practices to keep you only makes it a further aggravating experience for you.
Some examples of T&C based exits:
1. I remember few years ago how AOL would keep users: If you called them to cancel your subscription, they would harass you for hours and hours and make it impossible to delete your userid. Finally, few State Attorney Generals (includes Elliot Spitzer) had to enforce a new rule -- "If I -- the user -- wants to leave AOL -- I really get to leave." .. without my data of course.
2. Today, the first thing that comes to my mind is Linkedin. They impose a 30 day to get out of their Premium subscription. After you realize that their Premium subscription is still expensive and there are no good applications, making you decide to cancel the subscription -- Guess what? Yes! you cannot leave for 30 days. No way for you to take your data and leave - ever. Even, the payment takes 30 days. Linkedin is waiting to be defeated by the next "connections" imitator coming into play. So! be it.
Read this ... Pack Up Your Data and Leave Whenever You Want, It’s the New Rule of the Cloud
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