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?
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.
The unfortunate fact is it is a dog eat dog world, and corporations can and will fuck you over. Maintain a budget, maintain an emergency fund of $10k or 6 months living expenses (whichever is bigger) and be prepared to be screwed over so that when it does happen you don’t find yourself up the proverbial creek without a paddle.
On top of this, as an additional safety net, build a friend group and build a culture within your friend group of helping each other. One friend getting a surgery? Offer to cook for them, or bring them some precooked meals. A friend stuck on the side of the road, offer to come help, even if it’s just as emotional support.
I started this process a few months ago so I’m in a better position now that my work has announced that they’re relocating across the country and basically everyone is losing their jobs over the next 3-9 months. It would’ve been more convenient if this happened a year later, but it is what it is so now I have to shape my next steps and move forwards
The unfortunate fact is it is a dog eat dog world
No it’s not, that’s zero sum owner class propaganda designed to force us to waste energy competing with our peers instead of fighting the rich bastards
Humans have created a haven away from ‘nature red in tooth and claw’ where we DON’T have to compete with each other, and mutualism without profit is possible, it is literally the greatest achievement of our species, to short circuit natural selection.
In human culture, the weak and sick don’t have to be sacrificed for the good of the whole, and we can support a wide and diverse service and goods structure BECAUSE we have moved on from natural selection.
The problem is, predatory practices are often more rewarding short term than cooperative practices, and humans are geared for short term planning.
You get more food now for killing the farmer and taking his cattle, but you get more food for everyone forever if you let that farmer prosper.
Bandits kill the farmer, they are the ones telling you it is a dog eat dog world.
The farmer will tell you that the world is full of bounty if you put the effort in to cultivate it.
Yes a bandit uses less energy, and has more short term profit, but degrades the entire total outcome of the system by their greed.
This doesn’t change the fact that when no social safety net exists one must construct their own safety nets. That’s my point. We can talk all we want about how broken the systems are and how we would fix them if given the power to, but ultimately we have to live and survive. Use the good times to better prepare yourself to weather the bad, because good luck getting help from the government or corporations to do so
A $10k emergency fund? Even banks don’t carry enough cash these days for a working class person to be able to rob a bank to have that kind of money.
It can be very cheap to get a letter written by a lawyer on their letterhead, to demand things like service cancellation.
It’s not perfect and shouldn’t have to happen, but what’s your time and mental health worth?
Reading the comments here and it sounds like the only solution for people with first world problems who earn a good salary is violent revolution. Utterly deranged.
There are currently 120 comments, of which I can see one person suggested “violent protest” and one person suggested “blood”. Most of the comments which give any suggestions say unionisation, protest, and reform. If you see those as inherently violent that says a lot more about you than it does the other commenters.
Why do ordinary people seem so unprotected against these shady practices
Assuming you are in the USA, it’s fundamentally because our politics is fueled by private money. The “haves” spend lots of money to make rules that protect and enrich themselves at the expense of the “have nots”. The rich get richer, and the rest of us get a larger share of the burden.
The rich then spend more of their money convincing everyone else that some minority group of their fellow “have nots” are to blame and let us fight amongst ourselves. They starve us but leave us with just enough left to loose so that the price of doing something about it is too high (quitting, losing insurance, getting arrested at a protest, etc) for most of us to bear.
how can we change this?
Get money out of politics. Get the public to stop blaming their fellow have nots and demand change from the haves.
How does one person even start to address these issues?
Have empathy for and help your neighbors if you can, especially when they take the risks required to push for actual change. Talk to people. Organize. Support/start unions or a mutual aid organization. Go to local government meetings and make your voice heard. Run for local office.
Its easy for a small group of wealthy organizations to tilt specific elections or politics in their favor. It’s much harder them to do that in 1,000+ small communities across the nation.
I am not a lawyer, but consumer protections should generally kick in when an issue is actually evaluated in a court. If you are being charged for things you believe to be unfair, you would need to refuse to pay, then see them in action after the business escalates it. Often, a predatory business will give up when it knows it doesn’t have a case. But it’s pretty hard to work on behalf of a citizen if they ultimately are convinced that they do have an obligation to pay after all.
I agree with the other commenter on the first issue. If you have been paying the amount you were charged, and then hit with surprise retroactive charges, you would have a serious case in small claims. I expect a judge would favor you if it’s as described. $1000 for late fees is exorbitant, especially when the glitch was from their software and not rectified quickly. Unless you’re leaving out relevant details that explains the situation better.
For the second issue, needlessly cumbersome cancellation processes are considered dark patterns and may be illegal in some cases. These cases are being enforced more recently, even against large companies like Amazon. For your pest control case though, if you face pushback when cancelling it’s pretty simple to tell them you won’t be using their services and will refuse to pay. If you already paid, you may be able to issue a chargeback after explaining the situation to your bank. Seeing as how you would be being charged for services not done, I don’t see how the business could contest that after being informed of the cancellation. You would still be on the hook for a (reasonable) cancellation fee, as lost business from a cancelled reservation does represent real damages.
We are a country with a litigious history and we have recognized considerable rights for consumers. Just because you feel powerless doesn’t mean you are.
I’d wager that his lease has a mandatory arbitration clause that requires him to pay up front then try to get it back via arbiters chosen by the landlord.
Sorry I’m not american, but what is Pet Rent? never heard of that
It’s an extra monthly fee to cover the cost of extra cleaning and repairs needed due to tenants having pets and the damage they cause.
I assume it’s a surcharge on their rent for the fact that they have a pet.
I assumed that too but couldn’t believe
It’s exactly what it sounds like. Extra bullshit monthly rent tacked onto the regular rent in addition to a usually non-refundable pet deposit at time of move in or pet adoption.
Basically you’re a money faucet in the US, and wide open if you have pets or kids
Wait, Kids too?!! omg
I get the deposit, pets can be destructive, but pet rent is peak captalism. It’s like charging rent by the weight!
thank god I don’t have that here coz I have 2 dogs and 2 cats.
So that applies to any pet? Even hamsters and fish?
To be clear, rent is usually one value for however many humans will be living there, but everywhere has different rules for pets. For the most part you’re restricted to one or two dogs specifically if they’re allowed at all. Some places will charge the same for one or more, some will charge more for 2. It’s really variable. But with RealPage leading the way with the largest rental management companies, is getting pretty unified and difficult to not get fucked over by.
Smaller pets like fish or hamsters usually aren’t mentioned or charged for though that I’ve seen.
My lease explicitly prohibits fishtanks (and waterbeds IIRC). Pretty limited to just cats and dogs.
Because non-ordinary people make the rules.
it’s because money equals power and they have all the money and are able to build mechanisms to suck the money you have so that they have even more money. Can’t help with the landlord but for the pest control using something like virtual credit cards numbers. so if they won’t let you cancel. you just delete that card and they lose acess to your payment details. when they contact you for payment just cancel right then.
Capitalism.
European countries are also capitalist countries, but they have much better consumer protections and laws. It can be done.
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.
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?
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!
