More importantly, prior to airline deregulation in the 1970s only the wealthy and business travelers were flying and someone else carried their bags for them. It is the middle class traveler who lugs their own bags.
I think the difference is that flight opened up quick trips where you might want a bag with just enough clothing for a few days. I also think the 1970s also hits a point where peoples' clothing had become a good bit simpler. Wheeled bags shine in airports for carry on bags.
"I think the difference is that flight opened up quick trips where you might want a bag with just enough clothing for a few days."
Traveling salespeople etc. would often go on relatively short trips, even in the steam engine era. We underestimate mobility of pre-WWII people by a lot...
The point about simpler clothing is really interesting. I can imagine that this could be the crucial difference.
Why wouldn’t quick trips work on surface transport? Sure, it takes a long time to go far - surely nearly nobody ever went from London to China and came back a week later until it was practical to do so on planes. But for short distances it still would have been practical. I’m guessing there were people going from London to Manchester for a few days well before the 1970s.
The railway companies in Britain built their own hotels. The first was in 1839:
> The first railway hotels in London were built at Euston. Two hotels designed by Hardwick opened in 1839 on either side of the Arch; the Victoria on the west had basic facilities while the Euston on the east was designed for first-class passengers
And in Manchester:
> The Grand Junction Railway, Britain's first trunk line, was completed between Curzon Street railway station in Birmingham and Warrington Bank Quay railway station, Warrington, on 4 July 1837. Through trains began to convey passengers from the station to Birmingham, and a separate booking office and waiting room were provided. From 17 September 1838 there were through carriages to London Euston by some trains after completion of the London and Birmingham Railway in that year. This increase in long-distance services resulted in one of the first private railway hotels opening in Liverpool Road.
I think you also need travel to be available for a class of people who are both expected to change clothes every day and did not have porters carrying their luggage.
Not true about flying. My family was definitely middle class, and we made several trips on jet airplanes, along with many other non-upper class people, in the mid-60s.
Although perhaps I misunderstand your point--if your point is about someone else carrying the bags, maybe. But if that's the case, then why restrict it to flying, as opposed to travel by train or car?
I don't get this argument that Apple making it difficult for their paying customers to send and receive messages is somehow a good thing. It's also not like Apple is helpless, they managed to shut down Beeper.
Yes. That's OP is true. Let me add some more things which are not used anywhere on the world.
- Bosch Automotive: Probably powers at least half of the cars one way or other in the US.
- Chrysler's MultiJet Diesel, actually invented twice by Fiat, and led to Fiat's absorption of Chrysler since they have failed their "usage" obligations.
- Siemens' industrial automation, probably powers half of the world's advanced PLC requirements.
- ASML: Building the machines almost everyone uses to create the ICs you're using to read this very comment.
- NXP Semiconductor: A spin-off of Philips of Netherlands.
- Wera: Purveyor of premium hand tools. Not made for heavy abuse, but used by companies like Apple (a small startup in US which has more money than a couple countries combined) in their factories and service centers as official tools supplier (Plus Japanese Camera Manufacturers Group use them to make JIS approved screwdrivers).
- Rolls Royce Aerospace: They just make puny airplane engines which most of the world uses.
- Airbus: Makes planes which doesn't have doors which disassemble mid-flight.
Dunno. This is what I came up in five minutes. They're irrelevant, indeed.
The opposite is not a fine attitude to have especially if you have too few customers. Once they know that they can ignore payments by using that kind of excuse, something very bad will happen to your subscription revenue.
Multiple reminders to the same person isn't much use if he's in hospital, and you're ignoring the out-of-office replies.
The time this happened to us, I was pleased the company looked at our website and phoned the receptionist. We paid the bill within an hour, and moved the responsibility to the finance and IT teams.
Maybe there are too many customers who just ignore bills for services they no longer want to use, I don't know, but given these companies usually have a sales team it would seem worth the time to make a call or write a personal email to an existing customer to maintain their custom.
I know of a company that missed its yearly Microsoft Exchange Online payment. After four month Microsoft cut of their email. Which one could argue is also a "public notice" because emails bounced. (That did the trick and the company paid immediately.)
You are telling me:
1. Microsoft should have tried to find a different way to contact and reach out.
2. That you would have moved your eMail/Groupware to someone else because of that.
At least where I live & work, I have to pay taxes the when I invoice, not when I receive payment, so they cost me 20% of the billed amount, at least temporarily.
Yeah, but you also lose all the income from that customer to save a few bucks for sending an extra invoice…? The customers who pay a little late have never been a noticeable cost for us.
The ones that contact support for every little thing or those that have a million strange feature requests on the other hand.
No giving notice is public service against fraudulent organization. It indicates clearly that only proper way to operate with such organization is payment before service is provided.
Paying your bills should be first priority. No excuse, no crying. If you fail, fully own to it and terminate the chain of command involved.
Some companies love to blame vendors for their own non-payment. The blameshift works when users only have the company's (the actual customer's) word for it.
Having basic transparency like "this service is in read-only due to nonpayment" really helps internal users to realize the company is being a bad customer. Which then pushes the company's reps to actually pay for the service.
If the bills are indeed not paid and the reason I don't see why it's "inexcusable". As long as you're not claiming they can't pay them or haven't paid them out of malice without proof you're just being truthful.
Keeping quiet when it's something simple is more weird to me. God forbid someone assumes massive corpo X is going bankrupt because of a web hosting bill..
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