That's right Mav, if you had to wait that long for a meal in a restaurant you'd have gotten it for free, and maybe even got a free dinner pass for the next time you come back.
That's what customer service is all about, the customer is allways right, and if you want him to come back, and also if you dont want him to spread bad words about ya, you have to treat it this way.

The losses you'll suffer from bad publicity, will far out weigh the loss of giving something free of charge to an unsatisfied customer.

This thread alone is a good example of how fast, far and wide bad publicity can spread, and cost a company big time.

Yayyyyyyy!!

Boy im just glad I was able to have bought this one right off the storeshelf in the 2004 version. 

No I didnt have the 2002 ver., bit I did make out because the ver. I bought on CD was for both 2k2 & 2k4, so now have FD3 insatalled in both, all for one price. 8)

yeeaaah but its publicity of a bad nature. at least, the beginning of the post was.
dano.

You also have to consider the effect of who comes down on which side of the arguement...err...discussion.

As Hyperion said, most will forget the discussion and only remember the name. Among those that DO remember half will be influenced by statements made by those they respect or are "known" names in the FS realm.

So, work out the math (all figures arbitrary):

• 80% Forget discussion and remember name "Abacus"
• 5% Remember discussion but are influenced in favour of Abacus
• 5% Remember discussion but are influenced against Abacus
• 10% Remember discussion, decide to make up their own minds about Abacus

So what started out as an anti-Abacus thread actually results in 85% of the readers being pro-Abacus. Many of the anti-Abacus crowd would also fall into the anti-payware crowd...so no net loss to Abacus there.

There's no such thing as bad publicity.