The customer is not right. The customer is dumb. The customer doesn’t know what they want until we tell them. Their complaints are meaningless.

I am sick of this attitude toward customer service.

Way back at the turn of the millennium, before the days of torrents and instant watch, I was a Netflix power user. I loved their service and told people about it. I was personally responsible for at least three of my friends and two family members signing up. I didn’t get anything in return either. They gave me no referral discount or whatever. I did it because I believed in their product and thought they were great.

I spent about as much time on their site, writing reviews and making lists of movies as I now spend on WordPress. I was a top ten reviewer. At one point, I was on the five DVD plan; not quite the highest, but close. I paid them almost $40 a month.

Slowly, Netflix did away with all the features I loved about the site. They forced an instant watch on us that, as a Mac user, I couldn’t even use, but was still paying for, because I had no choice. They got rid of lists, which I used all the time. They made it more difficult to review movies, so I just stopped writing reviews.

Eventually, they decided to phase out DVDs, their core product, altogether and changed the pricing structure. I went from happily giving them nearly $40 a month to paying them $7.99 a month for instant watch only. I can’t remember the last time I visited the Netflix website. Nowadays, I barely use it. If there was a viable alternative, I would have canceled Netflix entirely.

They alienated their most ardent, most loyal customers by dumbing everything down to appease a broader customer base.

And now, WordPress is doing the same. They have been forcing changes on us that are dumbing everything down for a broader customer base for months now.

I’ve been a loyal WordPress supporter since 2009. I’ve touted it as the best blogging platform and have gotten one friend to switch over here.

Just this week, they forced a change to their editor that gets rid of most of the functionality of the old one. I no longer have theme-specific options. I have no idea how to add a post to the featured sliders that come standard with my premium theme. I can’t change the author, the slug, copy a post or request feedback in the new editor. Hell, for the first three days, I couldn’t use it at all because it just hung up whenever I tried to save.

And their response has been quite similar to Netflix’s response: “We hear you and we don’t care.”

We shouldn’t just sit idly by and let them destroy our blogs. I pay them yearly for the upgrade. I bought a premium theme with theme-specific options that are now gone. I have complained a blue streak and if they respond at all, they have treated me like it’s my fault, like I’m a Luddite who just can’t handle their new awesomeness.

Even those of you who have “free” blogs pay their salaries so we should have some say. I’m asking you who write blogs on WordPress to speak up. If more of us complain, they might not take the same path as Netflix and alienate us all.

If you are unhappy with the new “beep beep boop” nonsense post editor, please, leave a comment on this thread. Be as specific with your comments as you can and maybe, just maybe, they’ll hear us. It’s not entirely too late. I hope it’s not anyway.