If you look at my recent postings you see that I am not unbiased about their poor customer service, so consider my posting in that light -- but I do worry that this is the kind of corporate greed that ultimately kills companies. I have seen this kind of nonsense in my own corporate life having previously worked for a company of 175000 employees that slowly killed itself.

First management steps in and tries to cut factory costs by retiring expensive workers and shifting to 'more efficient' (read: CHEAPER) production methods. If the new process ends up making a degraded product then in the short term you just shift the burden over to product rework, QC and field service. Once you go through several years of squeezing the factory for efficiency then those same bean counters will turn their focus to another group that costs too much money and start to work on "efficiencies" there. Maybe they will take away the free coffee in the break room, or maybe they will swing for the fences and invent an initiative like: Let's target a 25% reduction in the cost of customer support. Yes, we spend way too much money every year on customer support, we need to do more with less. C'mon Dan, aren't you a team player?? We can improve our bottom line number by 8% over two years with zero top line growth!!

You will note that senior management never falls under the focus of being driven for cost cutting and efficiency. They will find reasons to give themselves larger and larger bonuses because only they could be so smart as to think this **** up.

Eventually you destroy a brand...