I got a call from the Wall Street Journal this week. I’ve been a subscriber for over a decade.

They told me they’re happy to offer their new renewal deal, at $25 per month.

My expiring subscription cost $99 for the year, or $8.25 monthly. This is an increase of over 300 percent. 

I told them no thank you. I suppose I’ll have to get my business news and insights elsewhere.

Comcast plays the same game with cable subscriptions, increasing prices substantially every six months or so.

I actually have calendar entries that remind me to call customer service, threaten to leave the company, and get my rate lowered again.

This is our reward for being loyal customers. To be squeezed. To be offended.

New customers get rewarded for “trying” the service for the first time, but loyal, committed customers who have spent a lot of time and money with you, to the exclusion of your competition…they get punished with price increases for the exactly the same service you were delivering yesterday. Tomorrow’s Wall Street Journal will have the same kind of material — and likely the same quantity of it, give or take — as yesterday’s. Except it will cost three times more.

Similarly, my Comcast channels won’t magically increase by 50 percent tomorrow, but my price will. Unless I call customer service at regularly prescribed intervals, playing the game laid out before me, like a monkey.

Let’s take the emotion out of it and look at it from a marketing strategy perspective:

These companies are creating anti-evangelists.

This is the first time I’ve used this phrase here or anywhere else.

The anti-evangelist is an angry customer. She has been made to feel angry. And repeatedly. Instead of telling anyone who will listen how wonderful you are, she tells her friends and family how annoyed you’ve made her. She spreads bad news about you. 

The anti-evangelist is not just a customer who stays quiet. It is a customer who poisons the water. Your water. The anti-evangelist drives away prospective customers. She damages your reputation. She spreads negativity about you.

But then, you can’t be surprised. You’ve worked hard to create her. To create them.

If you have anti-evangelists, you’ve earned them.

Now you must deal with the consequences.