I’m just a regular person making about $70K a year in a big city, and I’ve recently felt incredibly powerless dealing with private companies. For instance, my landlord’s auto-pay system had a glitch that excluded my pet rent and water bill. I ended up with over $1,000 in late fees. Despite hours on the phone, it turns out their system doesn’t really do auto-pay and requires a fixed amount instead of covering the full rent. It feels like a scam, and my options are to pay the fees or potentially spend a fortune on legal action.
Another frustrating experience was trying to cancel my pest control service. I had to endure a 40-minute call followed by 35 minutes of arguing, just to finally cancel. There’s no online cancellation option, and the process felt like a timeshare sales pitch.
Why do ordinary people seem so unprotected against these shady practices, and how can we change this? How does one person even start to address these issues?
The country was founded by slave owners. After that we had various “industry barons” like railroads, petroleum, automobiles, etc. Now we have multinational corporations (with larger budgets and more power than several countries) calling the shots in congress. It’s always been like this. Post-WWII provided a brief respite, but that limited run of the “American Dream” was temporary and no longer exists.
Part of the solution would be: worker cooperatives. We need a lot more of those. It won’t solve everything, but it’s a really good start.
We need a kind of everybody union.
I had this conversation with lots of people if everyone saw a company is doing things or taking advantage of people imagine if on the exact same day, one million customers canceled their accounts. That kind of unity can give all the power needed to the regular people. But you can’t get people to cooperate or even to have enough self-discipline to go along with something that isn’t for their immediate and measurable benefit. And so the big players know they can abuse and exploit.
A more perfect union, that can establish justice and domestic tranquility. One that provides for the common defense, promotes the general welfare, and secures the blessing of liberty for ourselves and future generations.
Isn’t that ideally what the government is supposed to be? We can’t all individually fight for ourselves, so we vote for people to represent us and work to protect our interests. That is, if politicians actual represented their constituents and not the highest bidder.
Well yes except our government is bought and owned by those corporations. That’s why we are not represented by them.
There’s a simple way to put it, but it’s painful to hear: the bad guys won.
I have had this same thought many times! Vote with our wallets en masse. It’s kind of almost happening to fast food.
In Australia ACCC takes care of abusive businesses, surely there must be something like that? Even 3rd world countries like Brazil has something like it.
Nope. America is OWNED by rich people. It’s a corporation and they make the laws so all the laws are to help them have more power.
I wouldn’t see it so black-and-whitely. I don’t think Tim Walz is owned by anyone and he is running for VP.
He’s beholden to the corporations controlled by the wealthiest 1%. Anyone who gets elected is already someone who “plays ball” because they don’t get to there otherwise.
Ha you don’t even get to run without people in line to donate to you. And since corp donates for both candidates it’s a win or win situation for them, which implies lose or lose for everyone.
It would be nice if corporate bribery were not allowed. Giving tens of millions to them - to their “campaign” - which they all funnel and launder into their pockets - is literal and unambiguous bribery. And yet it’s the reality of our nation.
AIPAC owns him.
I haven’t been to Brazil but as far as its politics goes I don’t think it’s that 3rd world
Wait until you see the Brazilian definition of poverty. People literally dream of having the chance to be poor in US.
Ill add a worker cooperative might be even better than a union because a union can easily be corrupt
basically capitalism
The country was founded by slave owners.
Thanks for starting your argument with this, so I know I can ignore the rest.
So you don’t understand basic American history or what the word ignore means. Got it.
See also: blaming “capitalism” for literally everything
Vote. Seriously. Recent history around consumer protection has been very partisan and this is something that impacts us all
One party creates things like
- cfpb
- net neutrality
- ACA
- education assistance
The other party. Cancels, sues, interrupts. Project 2025 probably tries to entirely destroy
One party creates things like cfpb
Putting warning labels on predatory lending. Spending more time fighting various right-wing interests in the right-wing dominated courts than doing any actual regulating. Does nothing to deliver actual money to the people who need it - all they can do is regulate the extent to which a private loan is shitty and extortionary.
net neutrality
Tries to regulate the ISP monopoly rather than breaking it up. Doesn’t actually guarantee internet access to anyone. Doesn’t extend high speed internet or establish public internet access points. Also constantly under fire in the right-wing dominated courts, such that they can’t effectively deliver on their function.
ACA
The best thing about the ACA is the extension of who qualifies for Medicaid. Everything else is a band-aid on a band-aid. Just open up Medicaid as the Public Option and you’d have done more good for more people in the long run.
education assistance
Doesn’t limit the total cost of education. Can’t even extend loans at the Prime Rate, because some private middle man always needs to get a cut. Doesn’t improve access to education by setting up new public schools or vocational programs. Doesn’t increase teacher pay, reduce student housing costs, or mitigate the cost of living while pursuing an education.
Blah blah, the Republicans Are Worse. But the Democrats only ever seem capable of operating through the private sector via subsidies and civil penalties. Where is the actual public infrastructure? What does the public sector actually own and operate? What is being delivered at cost rather than as a profit-center for a third party?
I once got screwed by my mortgage provider and was helpless. I submitted a complaint to the CFPB and they contacted my mortgage provider and made them make things right. That directly translated to significant money back in my pocket.
I once got screwed by my mortgage provider
This is the root of the problem. You shouldn’t need to borrow money from a private third party in order to have a home.
All of these are really important policy changes that have positively impacted our society. How do you spark change to the effect of all these? I recently reached out to the Federal trade commission on one company that has some extremely predatory practices but don’t think that’ll do anything. What other methods can I use? Email congressman or something?
After two hours of calls to try to resolve mobile data failing to work with a particular company who said I’ll have to factory reset my device, I said I would have to do it later, but would probably end up contacting the FCC. After I hung up, mobile data was magically working in less than two minutes.
It’s sad that this is the best option for y’all.
And for the cherry on top, the party in the 2-party system that claims to be the “good” side trying to implement all these citizen-friendly policies have enjoyed multiple majorities in the last 40 years that would have allowed them to do these with the snap of a finger using well documented legal mechanisms.
And yet, they do not.
That liberal sneer about leftists just wanting to complain rather than fix things? Also projection.
Really weird how everywhere I turn, the “good” side is doing the same fucking thing as the bad orange side.
Fuck your bullshit propaganda.
I finally was able to cancel a Telus home security service after they tried to put me in a 3 yr contract. I finally was able to cancel. I sent the equipment back and then they started charging me other monthly fees as if I had renewed. I didn’t even have their equipment anymore.
another 45 minutes on the phone and they say it is finally cancelled. But who knows. I’ll probably have to call again when they take the amount from my bank account despite removing my bank info from their site.
A company with 19.2M users. Imagine how many people are robbed “by mistake.” This is not a mistake but part of their internal procedures.
Cancelling a service even when contract is over is made difficult on purpose.
Yeah I am seeing this more and more. You even see it business to business. We need regulation, monopoly busting, and progressive taxation.
I don’t know if you’ve been following what Lina Khan’s been doing with the FTC but there’s some incredibly antitrust work which she’s been putting into play. They’ve been really going after monopolization and Biden’s been putting forth rules to make breaking subscriptions easier, which would help with OPs particular problem: https://www.nytimes.com/2024/08/15/us/us-government-unsubscribe-memberships.html.
When corpotations are allowed to buy out politicians, this is the end result. Corporations have no responsibility, they know they will not be held accountable.
if corporations were people, most would literally be narcissistic sociopaths, which is of course why the owner class likes them so much.
One of the things more and more companies are doing is
Ignoring the Laws.
They have learned to ignore what they are required to do or what they are allowed to do . Knowing few will sue and those who win will get no more than they were due.
The companies have learned there is no downside for being criminal… So they have become criminals.
Good question and good examples. With things like forced arbitration in user agreements I’d love to know more on how to turn things around on this.
I spoke to a lawyer about something similar to this recently and he basically just laughed at me. Told me there is no way it’s worth it, would cost tens of thousands of dollars to fight it in court and would basically have no gain to me personally at all. Overturning such a small amount no matter how wrong or immoral it is would be extremely costly on both sides but they have way more money to throw at the issue than I do which I totally agree with honestly. So you can do something that’s totally immoral, just as long as you have tons of money behind you to pay for it
In a word. Lobbyists.
It turns out if you throw enough money at people then you can make them do anything you want.
Yep. Welcome to the hell that is corporate capitalism.
There’s a lot of replies here about why US citizens are in the situation they are but not how to fix it, which was the question you asked. You have two political parties in a first past the post system with largely similar corporate focussed policies, people primarily vote against a party rather than for one that represents them. If you really want to change things you’ll need to overhaul your voting system to break up your two party system and encourage competition from parties that actually represent what people want.
Unfortunately there is no safe and easy way to do this; it means the two parties in power giving up that power which they will not do willingly. You’ll need large scale consistent and actually disruptive protests, ie not just meeting up for a day then returning to life as nornal, but the US has a history of responding to protests the same way they do everything; with violence.
So more practically, you can contact your representative at the appropriate level of government and hope they don’t completely ignore you this time.
That latter issue is actually being worked on, law wise, right now.
Explain how!
The FTC is working on a bill or something to make “one click cancel” required.
Which is an excellent answer to the question, “how do we fix it?” Vote for fucking Democrats!! Democrat administrations enact consumer protections!
I swear shit has gotten exponentially worse since I was young. For example, last year I suffered a brain injury, I have about a month of missing memory. During that month, my homeowners association sent notice that they were being sold to another management company and the autopay I’d been using for 5 years would be cancelled. I missed this notice due to being in the hospital with brain damage and so never got new payment switched over.
I’m used to companies being gracious and working with their customers. Instead I had a lawyer sicked on me and the paperwork to forclose my house was started. I wound up having to pay all their legal fees and penalties which was an order of magnitude more than the actuall missed payments.
This was the most painful one recently but this is par for the course. Someone else said it in this thread but it’s become a real dog eat dog world, something that used to be a folksy saying has now become a harsh reality.
I can’t tell you. Because the mods won’t like it.
But it rhymes with Piolence.
And Viola Ants
Why: Because we are, and always have been, an oligarchy
How to fix: Bloody revolution, that’s about it.
The owner class never give up their power willingly, and we can’t afford to bribe the politicians enough to force them to.
How to fix: Bloody revolution, that’s about it.
I disagree with this. It’ll take some revolution, but can be avoided bloody.
On revolution I do say vote. The 2022 election was a turnout of 52% of the voting age population. Just barely over half, and that’s the second highest turnout to a nonpresidential election year since 2000. All the oxygen always goes to the Presidency but what OP is dealing with comes up in local elections, and the local and state shit deals far more with your day to day than the national. Hell, when national laws even come up, weed is still schedule 1 “more dangerous than cocaine” to the federal government but just about every state has legalized it.
It’s not a quick solution, and it’s not as simple anymore as “go out and vote” but gotta kick everyone up who hasn’t given a shit (if they’re not voting, think they’ll back you in a revolution?). It’s a fucking slow ass slog that takes daily fighting, like I’ve got a group that I’m the one who posts the ballots, the dates, the links, honestly do everything but bang on their doors and drag them to the polls but it’s a little bit that helps. As I saw “A vote is not a valentine. You’re not professing your love for the candidate. It’s a chess move for the world you want to live in.”
The Republicans have been doing that for years, they’ve never let a single dem run even for superintendent across the country uncontested. They worked slow and methodically to get the supreme court. Their revolution can be argued to have started as far back as Nixon. We’re arguably at their end game, but it seems like they’ve overreached this time, it’s time to start clawing back territory.
The reason though I’m against a bloody revolution is, yes it’s useful as a last resort, but it honestly is at that in the chess analogy above picking up the table, throwing it in the room and starting a riot. You hope you come out okay but at that point it’s really up in the air who comes out on top. Guillotines come up a lot, and France is doing pretty well right now. But remember between modern France and the guillotines was a messy time post revolution that was stabilized by someone who declared himself Emperor and attempted to conquer all of Europe.
If we get a jan6 2.0, that is literally the last resort.
I’m hoping no human ever kills or dies for a political ideology but I am not that naive to think that blood won’t be spilled.
It already has, boogaloo boys and streaming church shooters.
And let us not forget there has never once been a successful capitulation with fascists, ever.
Well one big fix would be to make legal services free at point of services and instead make the government responsible for paying the salaries of lawyers.
Call it Justice for All like Medicare for All but more patriotic sounding and litigious.
Kills SLAP suits, and opens the gates for people who had legitimate grievances but were scared of the legal fees and costs to have access to their day in court.
because private companies were never meant to big this big and powerful.
They have so much power because they lobby and control the government, part of the problem is dems being generally unappealing and trying to focus more on less significant social issues rather than doing things like, taking away the rights that big corpos never should’ve had in the first place.
It’s a give and take game, the less regulations you have, the more companies you have and the more capital you have moving through you, the more you have the less regulations you have and the less capital you have moving through you.
