Every person who has a bad experience tells an average of 10 people about it. Nobody wants to get stuck in any kind of poor relationship. This practice of obfuscation and misdirection sacrifices new customer acquisition for the sake of current customers that don’t even want to be your customers anymore. No matter the maturity level of your business, customer acquisition is generally one of your main drivers of profit growth.

So riddle me this: when does it ever make sense to sacrifice profit growth (new customers) for the sake of a lost cause (unwilling customers)? Furthermore, you’re not even really trying to retain customers with this strategy. You’re doing the opposite by frustrating them, instead of trying to win then back. Short term and long term, this results in exponential failure to any business’s customer acquisition and retention initiatives.

TL;DR: This strategy sacrifices profit growth for income sources that you’re gonna lose anyway. Don’t do this ever.