If a serves offers stuff for free, or against ridiculously low prices, the rule "if you're not paying for it, you're not the customer, you are the product" usually applies.
These aren't customers with an "odd mindset", these are people that believe that they are an essential part of your product, usually in the form of advertiser fodder, and therefor you owe them. The assumption that you somehow profit from offering something for free is not a strange one, hence there is nothing pathological about these people demanding service and respect in the same way paying customers do.
However, paying customers know more or less exactly what to expect, because they can relate it to the amount of $$$ they pay. Customers of "free" services have no idea how much they are worth, so they tend to "negotiate" by aiming high. Yes, this is unpleasant, but it's very naive to be surprised about it, and a little disingenuous to be offended by it.
Maybe you see it that way, but you're not pathological. I had people demanding such or so or they were going to demand a refund.
...
Granted, not many.
Also, the principle "you're not the customer, you're the product", while well-known to you cynical kids today, had not yet really been invented in 1999.
These aren't customers with an "odd mindset", these are people that believe that they are an essential part of your product, usually in the form of advertiser fodder, and therefor you owe them. The assumption that you somehow profit from offering something for free is not a strange one, hence there is nothing pathological about these people demanding service and respect in the same way paying customers do.
However, paying customers know more or less exactly what to expect, because they can relate it to the amount of $$$ they pay. Customers of "free" services have no idea how much they are worth, so they tend to "negotiate" by aiming high. Yes, this is unpleasant, but it's very naive to be surprised about it, and a little disingenuous to be offended by it.