20.10 > You work for a software company that has developed a system that provides information about consumers and that is used within a SoS by a number of other retail businesses. They pay you for services used. Discuss the ethics of changing the system interfaces without notice to coerce users into paying higher charges. Consider this question from the point of view of the company's employees, customers, and shareholders.
No! This is terrible. I am sure from the shareholder perspective, they would not mind if the users were not informed of the increase in price, but this is completely unethical. A software company has a lot of power when it comes to hiding things from the public and from their customers, but they should not take advantage of this. The employees of the software company might feel uncomfortable with having to make this unethical change to the system, but will probably be unlikely to speak up in case they lose their jobs. Customers, being unaware of the change, will not have an opinion UNTIL (because it is bound to come out eventually) it is found out that the software company increased prices without notifying consumers. Then the shareholders will pretend they had no idea and blame it on the developers. The employees will probably be out of a job anyway once the consumers find out about everything, and then those employees have a stain on their record for the rest of their careers. So, all in all, it is a terrible idea, both for ethical reasons and practical ones.