Business ethics. Uh-huh.
This is more of a head-scratcher than an "AARGH! RAGE!" sort of situation, but it's a fine example of the things people will do and try to get away with.
So. I work in publishing, and one of the things we do is provide subscriptions to online journals. A while back, a guy got himself the deluxe print-and-online subscription to a business ethics journal. Now, this particular journal sells at three different rates, depending on who you are. The rate for a single subscriber for the package he ordered is about $100. (If you don't know what scholarly journals go for, that's actually fairly cheap, especially considering that an online subscription gets you access to the entire run of the journal and not just the current issue, and free tech support to boot.) There is also a discounted rate of $40, meant for students and retirees who are assumed not to have full-time jobs and would therefore have trouble affording the full price, and an institutional rate of about $400, which is for libraries and suchlike and meant to be used by multiple people. An individual subscription is meant for only the person who subscribes to it, and when you sign up you have to agree not to hand out your password to all and sundry so everyone can read for free.
So, we get a call from someone wanting to renew the guy's subscription. Not from the guy himself, but from a library. It turns out that he signed up for a personal account which he turned over to the library to share with anyone who walks through the door. Now his subscription is running out so they want to renew it. Only they asked us that since they're representing a school, they would like to have it for the $40 student rate this year.
That's right. They've been bilking us out of $300, but that wasn't quite enough for them, and they want an extra $60 discount on top of that.
Maybe we should give it to them. Seems they could really stand to learn something about ethics.
So. I work in publishing, and one of the things we do is provide subscriptions to online journals. A while back, a guy got himself the deluxe print-and-online subscription to a business ethics journal. Now, this particular journal sells at three different rates, depending on who you are. The rate for a single subscriber for the package he ordered is about $100. (If you don't know what scholarly journals go for, that's actually fairly cheap, especially considering that an online subscription gets you access to the entire run of the journal and not just the current issue, and free tech support to boot.) There is also a discounted rate of $40, meant for students and retirees who are assumed not to have full-time jobs and would therefore have trouble affording the full price, and an institutional rate of about $400, which is for libraries and suchlike and meant to be used by multiple people. An individual subscription is meant for only the person who subscribes to it, and when you sign up you have to agree not to hand out your password to all and sundry so everyone can read for free.
So, we get a call from someone wanting to renew the guy's subscription. Not from the guy himself, but from a library. It turns out that he signed up for a personal account which he turned over to the library to share with anyone who walks through the door. Now his subscription is running out so they want to renew it. Only they asked us that since they're representing a school, they would like to have it for the $40 student rate this year.
That's right. They've been bilking us out of $300, but that wasn't quite enough for them, and they want an extra $60 discount on top of that.
Maybe we should give it to them. Seems they could really stand to learn something about ethics.