Deleted Customer

The other day I checked my email and I discovered this courtesy reminder from my friendly Kodak online photo company, “According to our new Storage Policy, your photos may be deleted if you do not act soon.” The notice explained that if I do not spend $4.99 by May 22, 2009 they will delete all of my folders and close my account. It has been a year since I purchased anything from Kodak. At first, I was not disappointed. It's true, I have been a loyal customer of Kodak in the past. A year ago I had switched my online photo purchasing to Shutterfly. This was primarily due to lack of service on Kodak’s part following a series of botched prints and encountering an unreasonable sales staff. It does not inconvenience me in the slightest as I have all these photos backed up and burned to a disk. Then the thought occurred to me. What brave new territory are we crossing into where a business no longer needs to spend money to make money? How much money do companies spend annually to retain customers and respective market share? What new media sales philosophy are they teaching in universities that instruct future business owners that they can increase profits by denying customers access to what it is they sell? This is an online business. They have no brick and mortar retail overhead. They have no parking lot to maintain, no isles to stock or Musak machine to replenish, only server space and a website. Online storage IS the store. The products they sell are the umpteen thousand prints, frames, calendars, t-shirts, coffee mugs, photo books and key chains they sell to accentuate MY photos. If I can’t get IN to the store to access MY photos, I can’t buy anything.
I’m not so foolish to assume that storage space is not a real cost. More, I am not so naïve to think that these resources are not taken advantage of by unmotivated consumers and lazy cyber hoarders. But think for a second. Isn’t this the cost of doing business? In the off chance that Grandma wants to make a scrapbook and go back to that photo taken at Christmas 1998 and make a $3.99 5X7 print, that’s $3.99 that Kodak will never see.
Marketing companies retain your information for years and years and never bother to hit you up for “storage” space. Doctor’s and hospitals (all brick and mortar mind you) retain records and x-rays to their benefit because they utilize these assets to retain their clientele. A pharmacy will be more than happy to dedicate some of their shelf space to your prescription whether you pick it up or not. When you do finally decide to come pick it up, they will be more than happy to sell you a pint of ice cream and some sunscreen to go with it. Facebook, You Tube and My Space have found equitable ways to dedicate massive storage space to their customers without a single penny committed on behalf of the user. That's the cost of driving traffic to their respective sites to gleen advertising and marketing dollars in trade for personal information.
I used to work at a commercial printer that decided storing their clients’ plates and film from prior jobs was a material cost and an unrealized revenue stream. We sent notices out to all of our past customers demanding payment for storage space or we would purge the documents. The clients responded by demanding that these materials, for all intents and purposes technically and legally was theirs to keep, be couriered over to a new printer who did not charge for storage. Guess who paid for the courier? Guess who closed their doors a few short years later? Additionally, I worked for a professional photo agency that charged a subscription to professional photographers to store, keyword and market their photography. The operative word there was market. This was what we were really selling to the photographers, not the storage space. I should mention that this company failed as well. How? We failed by attempting to charge a premium for storage space.
Kodak is trying to bully it’s patrons into increasing sales volume in the interest of short term gain. This caption is on their website:
How our new storage policy works:
It’s long been our policy that Gallery customers make an annual purchase in exchange for unlimited photo storage and sharing; however, without a minimum defined purchase amount, some customers have ended up spending as little as 15¢. The result: Our loyal customers who regularly shop the Gallery have essentially been subsidizing those who don’t.

“Our loyal customers who regularly shop the Gallery have essentially been subsidizing those who don’t.” Now that really slaps on the guilt mustard. Who are these people, PBS? Can you imagine if Wal*Mart started demanding consumers that they shop at a Wal*Mart at least once a month or they will be denied access to their stores? I have never purchased anything from Neiman Marcus, yet they pay insurance companies millions of dollars to protect me as I peruse their unaffordables and paw through their unmentionables. They don’t seem to mind the physical space that I take up. Even if I am blocking T. Boone Pickens from his next pair of quail feathered briefs.
I am not begrudging Kodak for taking away my online photo storage. It’s a reality that there are literally hundreds of websites (Photobucket, Picasa, Flickr, Shutterfly to name a few) that will be happy to store my photos free of charge. This might be a desperate cash grab by Kodak as they may suffer the fate of my aforementioned companies. I’m not really sure. I don't know why companies are so short sided in their quest for ever heftier profits and why they continue to neglect to consider why they are in business in the first place. I guess when traditional advertising and customer service fails to generate moderate sales activity, these new age companies result to pathetic threats. Perhaps this speaks to our current economic demise. Did they stop and think about what benefit over all of these other photo sites they provide that has allowed them to retain those "loyal customers"? All I know is that I am no longer one of them.