No the sales kid actually started laughing a little when he dug into it. He was like ah did you bail on a 2 dollar service fee or something, years ago? I was like jfc you have got to be joking, they’re denying me for that? 😂

Rogers chased me for months via collections agencies back in the early oughts because after I had cancelled my cell phone (and paid everything I owed up to date)… there was a $1.80 service charge or some shit that I didn’t get the bill for… so they literally sent it to receivership.

I laughed, and ignored them. It came back to bite me over a decade later when I was looking for a new cell and plan. Rogers had the one I wanted, and I applied and was rejected because of that $1.80 default I pulled in my early 20’s. Good times.

Recently I was a Shaw internet customer. I wasn’t keeping up with the news that they were merging with Rogers. Around the time I found out about that, I was moving anyhow and neither service is available where I am located now. The best part is, I started looking into my modem settings (provided by and managed by Shaw at the time i got it) and I realized that they had force-enabled Shaw/Rogers Public Hotspot services on my modem/router. This is notable because I had put the device in bridge mode over a year prior, and completely disabled the wifi antennas on it. The company (Rogers) had set into motion some bullshit to turn every single modem/router in every consumer’s home into a public wifi hotspot, without any consent or prior knowledge. The wifi account itself being used as the hotspot is separate from your own private traffic etc… but it eats into the bandwidth you’re paying for, obviously. If you’re in a high-traffic part of a large community, probably a lot.

When I phoned in to cancel my plan I also made a point of asking the support person to take notes on my complaint about that non-consensual fuckery with the device sitting right beside my desk.

TL:DR fuck Rogers, and good for the Shaw techs for standing their ground.

Honestly when I told people where I worked, half of them heard Spotify in their mind and rarely bothered to correct them 😂

Welp… how long-winded do you want me to get on this one? You could look up literally hundreds of examples in mainstream news about how Shopify came up as a lean scrappy underdog circa 2012 alongside many of the second wave of budding platforms. In those days they were just a snowboard company who hated the pre-rolled ecomm solutions (especially Amazon) and came up with their own way.

Turns out a few other people liked their way as well… so they pivoted to SaaS and took off running. Their mantra at that time (and they still pull it out on the regular now… for laughs) was “Arming the rebels” (against Amazon…)

They built their SaaS platform on world-class customer/merchant support. Built things users asked for. Hired talented people who were inspired by the environment of doing good in the world… etc etc. They believed in what they were doing… i.e. “Make Commerce Better.”

Around the time I joined (2021) they got absolutely fucking hammered by new clients/merchants over lockdown. They were primed for “easy dropshipping” this and “low-cost barrier to entry” that for tens of millions of broke people sitting at home for lockdowns across 18+ months, looking for (pre-rolled) ways to earn an income. Their own marketing to small and emergin businesses (easy money over here!) ended up fucking them in the end.

They did an over-hiring wave like any other tech compan at the time. Very shortly after their email and chat support queues were overrun (weeks-long wait times) they reduces phone support hours for normal merchants before killing them completely shortly thereafter (workers can only field one call at a time, vs 3 chats and multiple emails per hour)… Obv they kept phones open for Plus merchants (enterprise, of course). That’s Enshittification - Stage 1. They built their business, name, and reputation helping the little guy (the “rebels”)… and now they were pulling up the ladder behind them to help the Plus/enterprize clients get and remain profitable, instead.

I could keep going. If you look far enough into it they started aggressively courting Enterprize clients last year after their shares tanked, and after they laid off 30% of staff… and while they do that they need to pull finances and resources further away from their “rebels” to keep the Nikes and the Chapters of the world happy. Established mega-corps don’t love it if you’re giving “the little guy” stellar support while you give them (Nike) the same level. They want “better”, at all times.

They’ve been at multi-billion dollar valuation for years prior to Covid. It was the pressure through lockdowns and out the other side tha pressured them to keep growing profitability, sent them over the edge of enshittification. They’ve clearly taken a lot of advice from Wall Street and Silicon Valley about how to stay on the money train (from same)… during tough financial times. They’re already pulling top-notch support from their enterprize clients, and third-party app devs (ask me how I know that). The next (obvious) phase is to claw back those margins that keep enterprize clients happy, once they have enough of them locked in that a few leaving won’t hurt them. That’s phase 3, if you haven’t been keeping track.

Do you need more of a primer, or did I answer your question?

See my other comment 😂

It doesn’t necessarily roll off the tongue, but that’s a good thing. It seems to be catching on, and frankly those large companies and orgs that are enshittifying and get labeled thusly might actually not love being called out with it, and hopefully slow their roll.

Doubtful, but a man can dream.

I used to work at S***ify… which is currently enshittifying at top-speed. It fits.

Yah I made it as far as the copy-jpeg phase. I’m nowhere near the edit-it-better-funny phase. Go for it 😂

nice