Generally speaking, as a consumer, I don’t boycott over a company’s political opinions or affiliations or lobbying practices. Most of the time, I just buy what I like.
I do boycott companies that make decisions or engage in practices that endanger consumers. For example, I refuse to buy Peter Pan peanut butter due to the roach feces fiasco years ago. I also refuse to buy Eukaneuba/Iams pet food due to the melamine contamination incident with the Iams brand years ago. In both cases, I have superior alternatives anyway, so this is painless and easy.
The same goes for Naugthy Dog and TLoUP2. I’m not ignoring TLoUP2 because of Neil Druckmann’s political or social opinions, nor because of what Sony did to content creators on YouTube and Twitter (sorry guys). Rather, I’m not buying the game because I know I’m not going to like the game. If the sequel had heart and soul featuring a story about people bonding through adversity and holding on to the smallest strand of hope to overcome daunting challenges — you know, like the first game, I would buy it anyway (sorry guys). But Neil Druckmann himself admitted the sequel was anything but, and early reviewers have confirmed that. So it’s a “bad product”, imo.
Regarding customer service, that sometimes does factor into my purchases if what I’m buying is a high-value item that I expect to last a long time, like a car. It depends on the product. I don’t care about customer service regarding any of the above companies, because in those cases the value is relatively small and the customer service in question would normally be a third-party, the retailer — Amazon or Publix.
The exception is intangible products — like phone or internet services. I those cases, yes, customer service vs. product quality probably weighs about 50/50 only because without reliability, there is no “product” (i.e., how often does the service go down, and when the service is down, how quickly is it restored). In this case, yeah, customer service is a big part of the product.
Bottom line, yeah, I agree with Jeremy, if his contention was “I don’t care what they say as long as they deliver a good product.”
P.S. About this scenario:
“If you walked into a restaurant that made the best steaks in the city and the chef came out, placed the steak on your table and lectured you on how you were a sick fucking bastard because you ate meat and called you all sorts of names, would you still keep coming back?”
I wouldn’t want to buy any food prepared by someone with such lack of respect and self-control, because he’d just as soon lace the food with something miserable. I think this is consistent; in this case the verbal assault lends to suspicions about the product, why I would no longer buy it.
