There are a handful of contributing causes, just off the top of my head:
Once you get past the first few tiers of paid service, providers tend to reign in the bullshiting "technically true by widely misleading" descriptions and are upfront about what they provide. Properly managed expectations don't lead to as strong of emotions when a customer finds out what they're getting doesn't work for them.
Commercial users will save face by A) avoiding discussing anything that could make them look bad, ditching a vendor is a tacit admission that you went wrong when you chose their service. Additionally, if their service is built on top of the ditched service, it casts quality concerns on their product too. B) Avoiding disparaging anyone, ever, is pretty common play-nice-save-face.
Why should I give my competitor helpful advice? I got caught up in a web, I don't need to help the competition avoid my mistakes.
In a multiple person organization, the party angry about the service and the party who decided to buy/use it are different individuals and airing grievances/venting is an internal process that they don't reiterated in public.
In a free service, a failure to deliver is the only downside. If I paid for a service, I'm going to be too preoccupied beating myself up for making a stupid purchase decision and looking for an better alternative than bothering to share my findings.
These causes and more are all often balled up and interpreted as free users acting "entitled". Sure that exists, but its a classic case of reading too much into imprecise metrics when someone assumes the cause.
Furthermore, the feedback from free users isn't inherently worse, and is just as subjective as that from paying users, it just tends to be more negative. For all we know, any given product could objectively be shit and because only rubes will buy it, the free users are the only ones that can let you know.
Once you get past the first few tiers of paid service, providers tend to reign in the bullshiting "technically true by widely misleading" descriptions and are upfront about what they provide. Properly managed expectations don't lead to as strong of emotions when a customer finds out what they're getting doesn't work for them.
Commercial users will save face by A) avoiding discussing anything that could make them look bad, ditching a vendor is a tacit admission that you went wrong when you chose their service. Additionally, if their service is built on top of the ditched service, it casts quality concerns on their product too. B) Avoiding disparaging anyone, ever, is pretty common play-nice-save-face.
Why should I give my competitor helpful advice? I got caught up in a web, I don't need to help the competition avoid my mistakes.
In a multiple person organization, the party angry about the service and the party who decided to buy/use it are different individuals and airing grievances/venting is an internal process that they don't reiterated in public.
In a free service, a failure to deliver is the only downside. If I paid for a service, I'm going to be too preoccupied beating myself up for making a stupid purchase decision and looking for an better alternative than bothering to share my findings.
These causes and more are all often balled up and interpreted as free users acting "entitled". Sure that exists, but its a classic case of reading too much into imprecise metrics when someone assumes the cause.
Furthermore, the feedback from free users isn't inherently worse, and is just as subjective as that from paying users, it just tends to be more negative. For all we know, any given product could objectively be shit and because only rubes will buy it, the free users are the only ones that can let you know.