Hugh

Because I don't believe you fairly comparing the complexity of the business model and the number of customers that major companies deal with, with that of a smal business. For instance, how many customers a day come into your place of business, and what is your annual turnover?

In any model, the more customers you have accessing a service, the more staff you have (all of whom have good days and bad days), the more interconnected and complex services you have, the more likely you are to have someone who's is unhappy with your service (and I reference your "Victor Meldrew" comment).

It's easy for someone with a simple business model/limited product range/low customer throughput to give personal service, but when a company has millions of customers, tens of thousands of staff, and multiple interconnected services/products to sell and support (and I am talking about any large company, not just VM), the odds of having some who is not happy with the service they have received rises at least arithmetically, if not geometrically.

That is not to say large companies should not try to give the best customer service possible, but you cannot please all of people all of the time.