Business Ethics

As you might’ve noticed, my site was not available for the past 24 hours. I had server access to mySQL in the very beginning (I still don’t know why) and could change things (i.e. post new articles), but nobody could access my site. To fix the downtime problem (this was not the first time, mind you) I had to change my hoster company from Ripplehost to Hostpc.com, as my xHoster has been constantly down, did not respond to any messages, and did not update his users on the situation. I switched and since I just paid for it, I requested my credit company to dispute the charge- no service=no money.

When I was through all the hoops to get my server running I thought of an ethical decision I’ve made. When we pay somebody, we say that they have responsibilities before their customers, but for some reason we don’t talk much about that of the customers. Does it mean that ethics depend on money? If I pay you, you have to behave ethically and I can do whatever I want? Did I, myself, behave ethically when I switched the company? Alright, in my case, the xhoster didn’t do anything to fix the problems and so they behaved very unethically, but what if they would do all they could? What if it was a problem with their hard-drives and I would decide not to wait and still switch? Would that be ethical? Most people say go ahead, you have the right to do so, but that just means that money determine ethics. In Russia, they have a saying that reads something like this: “One who pays, orders the music.” Is it same with ethics??! I hope not.