Calling support have a negative impact on economy

I've just read an interesting piece. It talks about the fact, that when consumers call support centers, in general, all vendors do charge for those calls. It makes an approximate $50M in costs for just basic support people need.

That makes it quite intriguing information. The earlier business models of Open Source products were exactly like this - they were supposed to provide the product for free, and then charge for the support. And this would, or at least could, be a quite viable model.

Just look at those Red Hat's and MySQL's - they're in pretty good shape, aren't they? Those companies worth millions and billions, and it seems to be working for them for quite awhile. I believe that charging for support might be a good business.

On the other hand, if the consumer is in consideration, then it might not be that well. It actually adds a cost to the initial product price, and in effect it may take a substantial time and effort from customers to use his or her service (or device). But, after all, we have this way in economy for ages now. I just hope, that homeowner loans would not be required for dealing with that.

Just a thought.