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?
Start organized movements to heavily push for ranked choice voting. If it becomes a national movement then maybe we’ll first start seeing it locally, then on a larger scale.
The US is incredibly bad at reining in capitalism. It also only has two parties that are both heavily influenced by lobbyists.
To fix it, not sure, calling politicians and showing up to stuff will help but it’s always going to be an uphill battle. Anyway, just vote, if you get the option to choose then vote for a third party as long as you’re not in a swing state.
The real solution is still voting reform to get more diverse opinion so if that’s on the ballot vote for it and try to get other people to do the same. The UK missed a major opportunity for voter reform.
This can happen over a couple of generations by removing winner take all representatives for a state and cause a hung parliament. Coalition talks will then be more likely to include concessions on the two state systems to get a governing coalition.
You can look at the UK as being the same only one generation ahead if things go well.
I agree with one correction.
Vote even in non swing states.
There are far too many registered voters who don’t vote.
Texas could be blue every year if half the dem no shows just voted.
Also even less vote outside of the presidential election.
Yes, IMO when there is more competition, politicians start caring about the little things besides the big things like inflation.
It also only has two parties that are both heavily influenced by lobbyists.
And yet, one party keeps enacting consumer and worker protection laws, with the other party taking them away. HMMM CURIOUS oh well I’m sure they’re both equally bad
Yeah, Democrats are way better at making legislation that benefits an average person. They’re also respect the parliamentary conventions and the democratic process.
Did not the same international business conglomerates and the same billionaires donate to both major political parties?
moving away from something like FPTP (what the majority of america uses) and to something like IRV (maine uses this iirc, and most euro countries also do) can vastly improve things.
As for american elections the states themselves have a lot of control over their own voting process, and even some of the federal process. So just voting locally for voter reform can be quite impactful.
Exactly, state elections with referendums on voting reform are absolutely crucial to move the needle.
There’s a major thing happening right now in the US where states are agreeing to pledge their vote to the winner of the popular vote as soon as the pledged electors get past 270 which is a big win in my opinion. It’s still doesn’t help with the two parties situation but any democratic improvement is a win.
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Contact local counsel. There’s probably an attorney who practices in rental law near you that does free consultations.
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It’s not that we don’t have protections it’s that we have an access to justice issue.
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Join a radical militia or leave.
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 my 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.
Yeah I’ve been feeling like there’s just not enough blood from this stone that they keep squeezing
I just started listening to a new podcast series called Master Plan that talks about how this happened deliberately and systematically over decades. It followed the Powell Doctrine. You can hear a conversation between the primary host, David Sirota, and Brianna Joy Gray (she’s not one of my favorites, but I tuned in because it was him) on Bad Faith podcast.
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
You got over $1000 in late fees from a single month of not having the full amount?
I can’t tell you. Because the mods won’t like it.
But it rhymes with Piolence.
And Viola Ants
Not that I would recommend this, but I feel like the shittiness of business correlates in inversely with the public’s opinion on molotov cocktails.
If your fucking business burns down weekly because you keep fucking people over, you’re not going to stay in business very long.
Open revolution is about the only avenue left.
Capitalism.
European countries are also capitalist countries, but they have much better consumer protections and laws. It can be done.
There are laws against excessive fees like this. In my home state of Florida, a landlord cannot charge more than 20% the rent in late fees.
And trust me, Florida is not known for its consumer protections. So chances are your state has a similar law which is probably better.
So if I were you I would look up the law and not pay.
Assuming of course you are telling the full truth- your full rent payment was late for a short period of time.
Have you seen the !politicaldiscussion@lemmy.world community? This would be a good post there as well, I think!
Because we ordinary people do not possess extraordinary funds to buy that protection
I think going back in time and video gaming Reagan would be a good start
Video gaming?
You should consider the kind of things that happen in video games.
But Minecrafting Reagan would not be possible so it has to be Ponging him. Or Q*berting him ?
Eaten by a Subnautica Reaper?
