^[1]In Your Call Is Not Important To Us ^[2] Farhad Manjoo of Slate bemoans the lack of anything approaching even tolerably good customer service from Gmail.

He’s moaning about the free-to-users, advertiser supported Gmail service, not the paid services businesses and government agencies sign up for.

It got me thinking. Sometimes free means a bargain. Sometimes not. I would argue that the affordances of Gmail so far outweigh the possibility of poor customer service that even with no customer service at all, it’s still a good thing.

However, my expectations are fairly low when I sign up for free services. And the old saw holds — You get what you pay for . . .