By the way, I can corroborate the 'assholes are never paying users' statistic, it's the freeloaders that seem to engender the jackasses. Paying members are almost always articulate and somewhat forgiving of errors on our end.
I have a personal theory about this. I think it is a personality type.
I had a friend who later in life became a free loader (and drug addict). I tried to help him and his family out by letting them stay a while while he tried to kick his habit.
Anyway long story short, from the moment they walked through the door, there was an attitude of entitlement because they where being victimized (in their mind).
When you confronted them about things, they would become very hostile like you where the one victimizing them.
I believe that this is a learned behavior that a certain segment of the population uses as a survival mechanism. It preys on the fact that a larger portion of society likes to avoid conflict and therefore will seek to sooth the situation.
The worst part about my personal situation was that his kids where also learning this behavior, and where actively being used against me by playing up the putting kids on the street argument. Which I eventually had to do for the sake my own family.
Anyway, I think the non-paying complaining assholes are a lesser form of this personality type.
If they're paying, they're deriving value from your service. If they're deriving value, they'll probably come to rely on that value. And thus, if it stops working, they won't want to piss you off so badly that you take that value away. Game theory, really.
