[Matt3o12_]

Maybe op was referring to free customers that are rude, and impose big costs to you (way above the average support ticket).

But agreed, if I get bad support as a free customer, how can I know that the support will get any better if I start paying (except for services that sell support). When I get an instant response to a question from a friendly support, I would say that I'm far more likely to upgrade to their paid server.

[optimiz3]

The point is that toxic customers tend to sap your bandwidth. If you impose a time cost on them it throttles their ability to do so.

One way or another the problem works itself out, which lets you focus on the paying (i.e. actual customers).