From where you're from, what is the norm/common mentality towards merchants and consumer rights?

I'm just curious because my experience has been that both the merchants and consumers are at understanding that each will act for their own self-interests and are 'equals' -- that is, like two mature, adult individuals, neither has authority or responsibilities towards the other beyond what's socially reasonable and accepted and both will act both rationally and civilly (obviously this doesn't always happen, but it's what's *expected*).

More and more, however, I've noticed on THE INTERNETS that there is this "The consumer is king" mentality (often coupled with an anti-corporate / anti-conglomerate / anti-"money" attitude) where consumers are convinced they are the most important thing in the universe to the merchants they buy from because they "are the customer" and yell, demand, and generally throw a tantrum when something doesn't go their way This has never been "normal" in the places I've been and amongst the people I interact with. Is it commonly accepted where you're from? Or is this just another example of the internet making otherwise respectably-acting and mature people into complete asses and babies?


(If you're curious, what spawned this queston was a post on Woot!, which recently changed its layout to something more modern/"corporate". I actually like it, but I can understand why it'd be frustrating, since it's fixed-with and causes horizontal scroll on non-widescreen resolutions and has ads everywhere [which I've adblocked <_<]. It seems like it's caused (to me, at least) an uproar of whining and the aforementioned 'HOW COULD YOU DO THIS TO US YOU USED TO BE COOL NOW YOURE JUST A CORPORATION WHO WANTS MONEY" *****ing.)

hey shopkeep hows it doing m8

my views of vendors/customers is probably most relevant to the old golden days of bartering mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm

yeah my mom got fed up with ebay and just shut it down, cause a few customers were dirty thieves, and ebay gives them more rights than the merchants.

this is the story:

someone in another country bought an electrical device from my mom, complained because it didn't have the right prongs. they went out and bought an adapter, plugged it in and the thing fried. she demanded a refund, ebay complied and the lady shipped the thing back, in the condition it wasn't sent.

it should not have been my mom's fault that the lady didn't know wtf she was doing.

I see this happen in real life too. It seems directly related to the size of the company.
If you're down at the local corner store, then it's seen as an equal partnership.
If you're over at k-mart, consumer is king.

On the internet however, even the small stores would seem faceless, thus the consumer (who has a face) is king.

That's my theory anyway

I live in an area where tourism is the primary industry. Everything slows to a crawl after the tourists leave in October. They very much think they run this town and can do what they'd like. They treat store owners like crap, and walk over every worker they see. It's not limited to the internet, people are just becoming more and more despicable.

That mentality comes from the ill conceived (and highly flawed) idea that "the customer is always right". The statement was originally coined by Harry Gordon Selfridge at his department store in London in 1909. It's meant to convey to a customer that they will receive good service from a business.

However, in today's world customer's often take it as a birthright and use the "always right" mentality to thrash over a company simply because in most scenarios the company will fold to the will of the consumer.

Interesting read about it here: http://positivesharing.com/2006/07/why-the-customer-is-always-right-results-in-bad-customer-service/