Free Idea Factory

This idea is for a way of more effectively responding to businesses whose practices are objectionable. Don’t simply not give them your money, which doesn’t have much effect because those businesses have little way of measuring what it is they lost, because they never know what they lost. Instead, almost give them your money, and then cancel your transaction and state explicitly your reason for canceling.

For example, instead of not shopping at a merchant’s website because the merchant has a privacy policy you don’t agree with, place a very large order, and then immediately cancel it (or, actually, these days you can just load it all in your shopping cart and then exit the website–they track abandoned carts), and tell them in an email WHY you canceled that order.

A thousand customers who didn’t walk in the door won’t register on any decision-maker’s reports. A large amount of cash money that almost got spent, and then didn’t, absolutely will show up.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, May 7th, 2008 at 12:32 pm and is filed under Conceptual, by Dan Waber. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.