Comment by danaris

No, the best way would be to have legislation and regulation that mandates that level of service.

"Voting with your wallet" cannot solve every issue, and that's never been more true than today. Rampant hyperconsolidation means that there are no longer enough companies providing these products and services to have any real hope of being able to just switch to one that does what you need. Furthermore, even if you can find a solution that lets you stop giving them money—like switching to Linux—those solutions are not sufficient for the vast majority of people and institutions, and there's no way for enough to switch to actually hurt the megacorporations.

And even if it did start to hurt them, what do you think would happen? They'd say "oh, our bad, we'll be real nicey-nice now!"?

No; they'd flex their money muscles and find ways to make sure those institutional customers switched back.

The only ways to solve these problems are a) better regulations mandating an acceptable level of service and customer protection, and b) serious antitrust with real teeth. Break 'em up.

Unfortunately, neither of those are going to happen in the current political...situation.