People have rather good intuitions for this when they're e.g. asking a bank CSR to waive an overdraft fee but they do not necessarily have the same intuitions when e.g. a client says "So, that money you think I owe you: can I pay you less than that, and later than you want it?"
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And indeed there are some circumstances where you *should happily agree* to a renegotiation against your narrow interests!
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"That sounds implausible." If you're a B2B SaaS, and a client either says cashflow issues or is transparently hitting all their vendors and asking to trade in their good customer brownie points for money, there is a really simple calculation in good times or bad.
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a) If I give the customer a month free, I am out either COGS for one month or revenue for one month depending on boring specifics. Upside: potentially account doesn't churn. b) If I don't, very high likelihood that they pay what they owe and churn immediately.
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So if you valued goodwill at literally zero—this isn't a relationship it is a vending machine—then this is strictly a math problem and under most plausible assumptions the answer to the math problem is "Comp them a month, put a note on the account, done in ~3 minutes."
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Replying to @patio11
Fwiw, even vending machine operators don't value goodwill at zero.
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Replying to @jmhredsox
*thinks about it for three seconds* You are of course right. My apologies, vending machine operators, I know you would absolutely comp a soda if someone called you and said "I paid for a soda but didn't get one."
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Replying to @patio11 @jmhredsox
Thoughts in those three seconds: "Vending machines sell habit forming products. Low ticket price, high customer LTV, high likelihood any particular customer is a regular." "Vending machine operator depends on 'landlord' not getting complaints about the machine's performance."
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Replying to @patio11
It's a real shame that "traveling salesman problem" means something else entirely, because the problems embedded in "this is a one-time transaction and there is a vanishingly small chance either of us encounter one another again" are rare and interesting.
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Replying to @jmhredsox
One can dive fascinatingly deeply on this topic because a *lot* of finance is one-shot games which are turned into iterated games by intermediaries specifically to avoid "Oh hey backstabbing is entirely consequences free?"
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Customer: Hey I'd like to buy your thing. Here's the money. Business: Hah I can just keep your money and not send you the thing. Payments industry: Do you think me bitcoin? Do you not read your agreements? Do you not understand how the peace is kept? Begone, ye craven fools.
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