20.10
You work for a software company that has developed a system that provides information about consumers and that is used within a SoS by a number of other retail businesses. They pay you for services used. Discuss the ethics of changing the system interfaces without notice to coerce users into paying higher charges. Consider this question from the point of view of the company's employees, customers, and shareholders.This is a terrible idea. I believe that a company should never take advantage of its users, especially if those users have no way to protest the change until after it’s implemented. Changing an interface and charging more for it can interrupt the plans and budgets of the users who use it. From a shareholder perspective, this can mean that new and existing customers can’t trust the company to be reliable. While this decision might bring in more revenue in the short run, in the long run it is likely to hurt profits because it damages the user’s trust. Aside from financial decisions, I would not be comfortable with this business plan as an employee. It simply seems wrong. I wouldn’t want a company to change their interfaces just to charge me more, and I wouldn’t want to do that to my system’s users either.