is the customer always right?

Further to the concept that "the relationship is the client", and that the relationship needs to be symbiotic to be sustainable, I dug up an oldie but a goody post from 2006. Here Alexander Kjerulf raises the point that there are some customers that manipulate service and support functions to their own advantage and to the disadvantage of other customers and staff. It's an interesting issue that challenges a conventional idiom in marketing coined almost 100 years ago. Best read it yourself - and go on to see the 280+ comments, many from staff who have been "wronged" by customers. The idoim "the customer is always right" certainly applies at an abstract market level more than at an individual level.