Dr. Helen Smith (Reynolds) has blogged about her problems with Comcast on a number of occasions, as have many other bloggers. A reader waxes philosophical.

An online dialogue about your goods, services or business practices can be the sharpest of double-edged swords: everyone’s either a critic or an advocate. But mostly a critic. When’s the last time you blogged about how glad you are that your morning soda wasn’t stale, or that your roof didn’t cave in today? After all, we’re more likely to tickle a keyboard in frustration than praise. It’s human nature. And due to the social networking explosion, there’s a lot of human nature out there for your current and prospective clients to see. If William Congreve thought scorned women were bad news, he would have been even more disturbed by what a disgruntled customer can do to a business’ reputation over the Internet.

I'll add something I consider important here--the slams are rarely evoked by simple mistakes. If bloggers are prompted to complain about a particular company, its almost always an egregious situation and most importantly--company policy.

I have, on occasion, screwed up royally with a customer and yet have experienced an almost extraordinary tolerance, even when, in my view, they would have been properly justified to throw me out on my ear. I've only lost one sale because a customer bad-mouthed me, and ironically that criticism was not justified.

The blogstorms, of which Comcast has endured more than any other company I'm aware of, are the result of corporate policy deliberately created to shaft their customers.

The fact that more an more large corporations are adopting these kinds of 19th century robber baron techniques is a function of their success and an anemic customer response. We clearly need more bloggers slamming exploitative businesses.