> (Most) people value service in and to the extent they pay for it. If it's "free", they can often be endlessly if ignorantly critical.
Maybe people don't want to believe that they wasted their money, so they minimize problems with things that they pay for, while a free product entails no personal investment, financial, social or psychological.
Maybe a low price (including zero) is a signal of a low quality product, which comes with the expectation of something to be criticized. (Their thinking might be) why would you be providing these services to us for free if they didn't suck?
On the other side of the coin, most of these anecdotes are instances of doing favors for friends/relatives. If you tried to charge them, a number of them would be critical of your decision to not 'do them a favor.'
Maybe people don't want to believe that they wasted their money, so they minimize problems with things that they pay for, while a free product entails no personal investment, financial, social or psychological.
Maybe a low price (including zero) is a signal of a low quality product, which comes with the expectation of something to be criticized. (Their thinking might be) why would you be providing these services to us for free if they didn't suck?