"As computers are being used increasingly by people who are not into technology, they default to the easiest solution as soon as they have a problem, which means they pick up the phone," said David Maffucci, the company's founder. "Now I charge a few bucks, and it's not exactly a moneymaker. But the fee is enough of a deterrent that my customers will look in the manual or on a manufacturer's Web site" instead of automatically calling him.
David Munn, for one, takes such developments in stride. "All of us are becoming more and more part of a self-service society," said Munn, president of Itsma, a technology marketing research firm in Lexington, Mass. Two decades ago, people laughed at automated tellers, he said. "Anytime you move the apple cart, folks get upset," he said. "But you know, it's just the way the world happens to be changing."
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