| I just recently wrapped up (hopefully) some donated work for a relative's business while it was struggling, financially. The relative's business partners were repeatedly dismissive, disrespectful, and ungrateful. The financial bind they'd gotten themselves into made my life more difficult in either having to pony up, myself, for what they needed or spend extra time and effort working around their financial constraints. The only reason I did it was my commitment to this relative, and the fact that they were now "in for a penny, in for a pound" with them. That business relationship between this relative and their partners is now unwinding, and I am glad to be shut of the latter. Once they started having some cashflow, their first concern was to spend it on other things rather taking care of past obligations, e.g. offering me even token compensation -- or building up some reserve, as I had suggested and in as much as I was not seeking payment. I write all this as a preface to the not infrequently commented observation: (Most) people value service in and to the extent they pay for it. If it's "free", they can often be endlessly if ignorantly critical. TANSTAAFL, even when you're buying. |
Maybe people don't want to believe that they wasted their money, so they minimize problems with things that they pay for, while a free product entails no personal investment, financial, social or psychological.
Maybe a low price (including zero) is a signal of a low quality product, which comes with the expectation of something to be criticized. (Their thinking might be) why would you be providing these services to us for free if they didn't suck?