the 13 oz pound, or what are you willing to put up with?

From the Desk of David Pogue: Customer-Service Cluelessness

Either there’s a plague of cluelessness sweeping the country’s customer-service systems, or a sinister, sneaky sort of thievery is going on. The worst part is that there’s no satisfaction in catching the culprits and calling them on it—because your time is worth something, too, and you don’t get any reimbursement for that.

I favor the “sinister, sneaky sort of thievery” argument.

Downsized packaging is nothing new: coffee companies introduced the 13 oz. pound years ago, and candy bars and bleach are among the many products that have converted to more diminutive sizes. Despite the downsizing furor, Mayfield expects to sell the same number of 56 oz. units this year as it sold 64 oz. cartons last year.

Give ’em an inch, and they think they’re a ruler, as my officemate said earlier this week. They’ll take whatever they can get away with. In the old days, when you watched the merchant fill your container, there was no way he could get away with this. But now, they figure it’s a “take it or leave it” proposition: do you take it or leave it?