You raise a good point: Why not just take care of myself and move on and not care about anyone else, or if I care why raise a finger or expend an ounce of energy when it can't benefit me and could actually hurt me? If other people get ripped off, who cares, right? Heck, maybe even in some twisted way I benefit when other people get screwed. Relatively speaking, if they get screwed and I don't, I'm better off (some kind of reverse competition or whatever name has been given to it).
For me, however, this "me, me, me" mentality is the core of what's wrong with America right now. There are too many people who only care about themselves, who won't spend a dime of their money or a second of their time to stand up for someone who can't do anything for them. Not so much here and in our community, which mostly has an abundance mentality and knows that it's not about what you can get, but what you can give, and do give.
That is why I'm spending my time, opening myself up criticism, etc. I will get my money back regardless. It's $129, who cares, really. I've been through an IPO, made multiple successful real estate and stock investments, and done over a billion dollars in deals since 1999. Who the fuck cares? I quite that and moved to Europe in 2006 and haven't "worked" since. Again, who cares? Nobody. It doesn't matter. The point is not about money, it's about standing up for other people, people, who might not have the ability, time, energy, or whatever to stand up for themselves or anyone else. Heck, it's even about standing up for those "gotta look out for #1" types, I hope to help save them some money, too. More importantly and critically, I hope to help a few realize that the only way we can really change the world and make it a better place is by standing up for each other, helping each other, not ourselves. I also hope to give a company or manager or two a second thought about their business any shady business practices they are considering, help them realize that they will "get" more by acting ethically.
You may call me a dreamer and an idealist, that I am, but I'm not the only one. And I hope to "always" believe that we can make positives differences in each others' lives. That's what it's about. Really.
Yes, I hate getting ripped off (or feeling like I am getting ripped of, if it's more accurate). And I will not take it. I will suffer costs in excess of the rip off in order to benefit the community. I think the community benefits from better, more ethical and clear, business practices. I think by standing up here, I encourage that.
Since I'm in full rant mode now, I'll close out with a few quotes that come to mind:
Obama:
"Change will not come if we wait for some other person or some other time. We are the ones we've been waiting for. We are the change that we seek."
Yes, that's an updated version of Mohandas Gandhi's "Be the change (that you want to see in the world)."
---------
NOFX:
(this is a punk version of "First They Came"):
First they put away the dealers,
keep our kids safe and off the street.
Then they put away the prostitutes,
keep married men cloistered at home.
Then they shooed away the bums,
then they beat and bashed the queers,
turned away asylum-seekers,
fed us suspicions and fears.
We didn’t raise our voice,
we didn’t make a fuss.
It’s funny there was no one left to notice
when they came for us.
---------
chrisco (me):
Stand up for each other people, even if it's at cost to you, maybe even especially if it is a cost to you. This I do know the name of: "altruistic punishment." Lots of info on the web about that. One blog that comes to mind is Christopher Allen's "Life With Alacrity" -- see http://www.lifewithalacrity.com/2005/03/dunbar_altruist.html.
What? How is your dispute directly with the company rather than having Mastercard do it on your behalf helping anyone else? You're free to blog about it or whatever in either scenario, so your rant really makes no sense to me. You're not standing up for anyone else, and in fact, a bunch of chargebacks is more likely to force the company to change over just refunds that are handled internally and don't reflect badly on them.
One key difference is the amount of MindJet's time that you can tie up and consume over the matter. If a tiny fraction of customers started taking hours per refund, MindJet is in fact likely to change their refund stance.
The ideal outcome (for a MindJet hater) is to chew up as much time/energy of MindJet's (and as little of Chris's ideally) and THEN do the chargeback anyway.
I don't have that kind of time, so I'd fire off the minimum response to the company, then declare to my issuing bank that I was "unable to resolve it" with the company, get my chargeback and move on, but I do think that Chris's heart is in the right place here.
You are entitled to your opinion, Ryan, of course, and I thank you for sharing it. However, if you don't see how someone making a public stand against a company with questionable business practices might do anything, such as possibly motive that company to improve it's practices, then, unfortunately, I can't help you. Also, the MasterCard dispute resolution and chargeback process is a last resort. You are not allowed to dispute a charge without first trying to resole the matter with the vendor.
1. Again, nothing about doing a dispute / chargeback precludes you from making a public stand against the company, so you need to stop conflating the two; they're orthogonal.
2. You have already tried to resolve the matter, and according to your own post, you have reached the point where you qualify for the dispute resolution protection offered by Mastercard. So why are you bringing this up?
2) I'm not sure what "this" you're referring to, but we'll let it go. Regarding credit card dispute resolution process, I'm not following you on that either, but we'll let that go too. Regarding this MindJet incident, as of 60 minutes ago, the company has come to its senses :)
PS: I just noticed that the tagline of your company is "People are talking about your brand. Are you listening?"
I see your point, even if it is a bit over the top, but ryanwaggoner's solution does pass the "what if everyone did this" test - i.e. it's not quite as bad as you make it out to be.
