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?
You have basically two options.
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vote for Democrats, and make sure your Democrat representatives know that you care a lot about consumer protections
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make a shit ton of money so you can fight these companies on more even footing
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Because we ordinary people do not possess extraordinary funds to buy that protection
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.
Because non-ordinary people make the rules.
Corporations tried out binding arbitration and the people just took it with very little complaining. So why not keep eroding consumer protections or the other rights citizens fought for in the before times?
Capitalism. The answer for most societal problems we face.
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.
To make major, sustained, positive change would require widespread violent revolution.
It’s the only thing we will have left pretty soon. Capitalism is pretty close to flatlining. Then we will have a Corporate Congress and the nation will become The United Corporation of America - in name as opposed to now where that’s what it is but it’s not yet called that.
We already have corporate Congress.
I do anticipate fascism becoming overt after November, but the powers that be will market it well, like that time they turned Nazism into ‘White Nationalism’.
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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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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.
This is why you never use autopay
only use it on accounts you can easily cancel.
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!
We’re peasants and there’s nothing we can do about it.
Well, there are things that could be done about it, but it’s been made very difficult to do .
I can’t tell you. Because the mods won’t like it.
But it rhymes with Piolence.
And Viola Ants
Blood
Sorry I’m not american, but what is Pet Rent? never heard of that
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 an extra monthly fee to cover the cost of extra cleaning and repairs needed due to tenants having pets and the damage they cause.
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.
