That title has been in my mind for days now, but sadly I haven’t had time to write anything. Which is to say, I’m getting that “before Christmas” burnout, which is translating into more and more Gears of War and less and less Actual Useful Stuff Getting Accomplished.
One problem that I have with Evil Corporations is that they take away (often at the ignorance of customers or end users) our ability to choose which company we’d like to deal with. It’s like a monopoly, but one that tries to lie to people by having two stores, with two completely different names and web sites.
Let’s take Canada’s cell phone gong show industry for example. You hate Rogers and go with Fido? Well, Rogers owns Fido. You hate Telus and go with Koodo (despite the ads that make you want to vomit) – well Telus owns Koodo. This list goes on and on. I ran into someone the other day who had no idea that Best Buy owns Future Shop. Bell owns Solo Mobile. I could go on.
One of the things I find funny about the cell phone situation in particular is how the ads for both Fido and Koodo come off completely mocking and deriding our infamous “System Access Fee” – and have abolished it, but their parent companies (Rogers and Telus, respectively) embrace the System Access Fee as a primary feature, er… a great way to screw customers, er… LOOK! SOMETHING SHINY!.