2001 Business Week article:
“Welcome to the new consumer apartheid. Those long lines and frustrating telephone trees aren’t always the result of companies simply not caring abut pleasing the customer anymore. Increasingly, companies have made a deliberate decision to give some people skimpy service because that’s all their business is worth. Call it the dark side of the technology boom, where marketers can amass a mountain of data that gives them an almost Orwellian view of each buyer. Consumers have become commodities to pamper, squeeze or toss away.”

Inequalities existed before – rich versus poor, sons of kings vs sons of carpenters, aristocrat and landowners Vs landworkers. The ability to segment and segregate consumers have increased and become institutionalized in the pursuit of profits, creating strange situations: people who pay their credit card bill in full at the end of each month are among the least profitable customers for credit card companies which rely a lot of late fees. So middle income customers receive less and less service for their business or can be enticed into greater purchases resulting in prohibitive cash payment to induce a default, and late fees…