I think it’s entirely reasonable for Dreamhost to post this, and it’s completely fair for more than half of the commenters to gain enjoyment from someone else’s distress. If he didn’t want to be ridiculed, he shouldn’t have been so upset about a situation that we don’t understand, should he?
Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to go and throw faeces at the disabled kids from the local school, in order to stave off the boredom until lunchtime.
I've never seen a remotely compelling argument for anything more, and I've never seen anything more used in 99.9% of user-generated content. Where did this fascination with perfecting pointless bloat come from?
From experience in running various marketing campaigns, the magic 'number' is 1 in 10. Charging $X with the option of paying $1.1X (or just over, even) for a 0.1 probability of getting the money straight back will get the most people buying into the scheme. That'll be around 1 in 10 people too. Force the extra payment and around half of them will walk away there and then(1). Bump the price up to $1.1X without mentioning it, only that there's a 1 in 10 chance of getting it free and you'll see the overall take-up go up anywhere from 25% to 100%.
Long story short: Make your new price $1.1X without fanfare, offer a 1 in 10 chance of getting it for free and you all win. They get their chance at a freebie at a cost they don't notice, you get your promotion vibe bumping up sales.
(1)I know that that's obvious, and it was dumb to run it - but we ran it anyway for the sake of completeness.
Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to go and throw faeces at the disabled kids from the local school, in order to stave off the boredom until lunchtime.