[avidiax]

I think it runs deeper than that. Customers are overly swayed by the up-front cost of a product or service. They don't want to pay a little more for a product that has good customer service, at least not until that customer service is legendary in the industry, and often not even then.

We could have the Swiss model, which is a bit of a culture shock: the customer support line is a paid service like a premium rate 1-900 number. It's very hard to wrap your head around as an American, but it does result in customer support that's very fast, and they either solve your problem quickly or not. And there is an incentive alignment, where you pay for the good support as a separate service, so it should not affect the base price of the good.

In a competitive industry, paid support would be a win-win. High support customers pay for the support they use, and less demanding customers don't pay anything. And if the product needs lots of support because of quality, then customers can choose a competitor.