(I’m a lawyer, and personally, I’ll read something like a lease in its entirety — but everything else just gets a quick glance. It’s simple math: I expect to pay $18,000 over the course of a year-long lease, so I take the time to read it.) What are people supposed to do? The legalese simply isn’t readable — figuratively, or even literally (how are the elderly supposed to read it?). I imagine even a lot of lawyers would labor over it. So the company erects this labyrinth of provisions, and customers wander into unaware of all the trap doors and grizzly monsters inside. Yet we’ve come to accept this as normal, simply because no one has stepped up to challenge it.
The truth is that Verizon should have done something to help this family. Either on the front end, by alerting them that their plan had changed and they were paying by the kilobyte, or on the back end, by calling them when it became clear that they were being charged hundreds of dollars a day. But no, Verizon simply wishes to pocket the money, declaring breezily that the customer should have known better. Caveat emptor worked a hell of a lot better when one was buying a chicken from a Roman market: a quick glance could tell you if the chicken was sick or not. Today, for large mega-corporations to booby-trap their contracts and then blame customers’ lack of diligence is despicable — it’s poor customer service, and it’s poor corporate citizenship. (And yes, if the Supreme Court wishes to give the corporation free speech rights, then it damn well needs to start exercising the responsibilities of citizenship and civil conduct by which we mortal beings have to abide.)
This is a market failure, pure and simple. Large companies all get away with this practice and have the economies of scale (they can afford the high-priced lawyers who draft all that gobbledygook) and market power to back it up. There is simply no excuse for such closed, opaque business, so we’ll have to fight law with law, making these contracts more open and transparent.
Government needs to do more to protect customers against these bad business practices: require all fine print contracts to be summarized in plain large-type English (as is required, at least somewhat, for credit card terms), and require companies to get specific assent that customers understand key terms of a contract, including the price, term, and duration of any promotional teaser rate and what the rate jumps to after that. So let’s start here — with new legislation, and perhaps a determination that such underhanded use of contract law is a violation of existing consumer protection laws (in Massachusetts, chapter 93A). And better yet, it might help progressive politicians direct some of that floating voter anger out there to the bad practices and reforms that are necessary to make the economy and society a bit more open and fair.
(first published at The Darwin Economy: http://www.thedarwineconomy.co… )
and gas at the pump went up .10/gal this week, so you can be sure that consumers will be paying for the Gulf Oil leak too; it won’t be BP. It seems to me that there have already been large outcries about the ridiculousness of what is going on in our country between corporations and consumers. We are a “free market” economy. Which means, that we are free to be screwed by any corporation, at any time. The only protection we have is from our government. They aren’t exactly stepping up to plate(or at least only kinda sorta stepping up).
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p>The only thing that we as a collective group of consumers can do is boycott and change our lives. I’ve been working on that. I no longer have a monthly cell phone plan, I have a “pay as you go” type, where I buy $15. worth of minutes a month. I would say that maybe all of us who have Verizon, which I do, could change or cancel plans. It’s only a large based action like that that would hit them where it hurts.
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p>I want to boycott BP, and think I just might. The only problem is that our local gas station is BP and I really love the owners. They are good people who work hard for their .03/gal profit and I don’t want to hurt them. But we all need to boycott BP, right now. As far as I’m concerned, they should not be forcing the cost of this oil mess onto consumers, they’ve already made billions of dollars in profits; they’ve had ample opportunity to improve the safety of these rigs, or at least have a game plan in place for the “worst case scenario”. They did not have that in place.
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p>Thanks for sharing this story. I think the Dover family should take it to court.
I’m not sure boycotting your local gas station is a great idea – especially if, as you say, the station owners are good people that you want to support. Obviously, one gas station isn’t going to make much difference to BP’s profit margin, whereas the station owners probably depend heavily on every customer they have. You will hurt them much sooner than you will hurt BP. Furthermore, BP simply can’t raise prices at the pump without suffering a dramatic drop-off in business, because people will simply go to the Mobil station down the street.
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p>Maybe you should talk to the station owners instead. Could you persuade them to sign on with a different oil company?
about 6 months ago. I doubt that they could switch again so quickly. I don’t know the cost of switching companies, but I would imagine there is some expense involved.
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p>Of course I’m aware that it wouldn’t work if BP alone raised the price of gas last week. I haven’t been to the next town over in MA to compare prices. However, I think it’s not unusual for gas companies to gouge prices in the face of a crisis. If every company raises their prices in the face of this crisis, it will benefit BP. As usual, it will come at the expense of the American consumer, the middle class,the working poor and our economy as a whole, because it only serves to suck more money away from other small businesses and discretionary services – i.e. jobs.
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p>When I’ve asked about gas pricing with our local station owner, he has said that the price at the pump is set by the gas company. He has also said that his profit from the sale of gas is .03/gal. Whether that’s before or after business expenses, I’m not sure. In consideration of the immense profiteering taking place by corporate, you would think they could be a little more generous with the men and woman who are standing on their feet all day running a small business. You would think they could
hand over a .09/gal profit for the small business selling their product. But of course, that would be socialism.
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p>You are right. It would by far hurt the local owners more than BP if I were to boycott in our town. But I will be mindful in other towns. If there are even 1,000,000 other people across the country who are of the same inclination, it may just send a small message. That would be awesome.
by buying only half the amount of gas we normally do? It’s the summer, it won’t be so bad. Cancel a few day trips, have a weeklong “staycation” where you stay at home and walk to local stores and parks, to protest our demand on oil that led to this expensive catastrophe.
2. Clean the junk out of your trunk. Golf clubs, books, bowling balls, etc. Lose the excess weight.
3. Easy on the gas, easy on the brake. If you see the light is red ahead, coast earlier instead of pressing the gas only to press the brake 4 seconds later. Cyclists tend to be very good at this, since they feel the acceleration in their legs.
4. Don’t idle. Ever. When you put the car in park, turn off the ignition immediately. Modern cars use extremely little petrol at startup; it’s almost always more frugal to just kill the engine.
5. Don’t speed. I know, I know, you swear that everybody does 80 on the Pike. It’s not true. Not everyone does 80. Join me in doing 65 — it’ll take you a few more minutes to get there, so leave a few minutes earlier. In the mean time, you’ll save time having to refill the tank, since you’ll get substantially better mileage.
6. Easy on the AC. The AC uses electricity, which requires the alternator, which drags on the engine. If you need it, use it… but try not to overdo it.
7. Going farther? Use the vehicle with better mileage!
8. Make an effort to combine trips. Really try to minimize the running out to do a single errand. Plan ahead as much as possible to reduce your total driving needs.
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p>And, of course, the next time you acquire an automobile, make sure that it’s mpgs are better than the vehicle you have now. This is particularly important if your mpgs are low. The change from 20 to 21 is more important than the change from 65 to 68 in terms of gallons of gas not burned.
I passed our local BP station. Gas(regular) was at 3.01/gal. In the next town over, Cumberland Farms was at 2.87/gal, Hess @ 2.86/gal, Pride and Shell were @ 2.91/gal. That’s quite a variation. I’ve seen our local station a few cents higher than next town Massachussetts, but this is way beyond the norm.
Since you seem to know the owners, you should ask them what’s going on. That would be very interesting, and I’d say newsworthy. Write up what you find in a separate post.
since I have to take a trip through the towns. Last night I heard some local gossip that they’ve raised their prices
to compete with the other two local service station. The other two are full service[they pump your gas, very rare these days] stations, which are always about .10 higher.
If that is true, maybe that’s why they switched to BP*, for more flexibility in pricing. I think it’s a bad idea for them to do that. They will lose many customers who have to drive into next town Massachusetts weekly anyway. People will just buy there gas there. Ill see what I can find out tomorrow.
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p>*The last time I talked to the owner about his pricing
method, he was with Getty. So it could be that BP does not set the price for retailers, or maybe he has a different type of contract with BP.
just wait until Verizon and Comcast turn the internet into their next cell phone plan. Anyone reading how Obama and his FCC are caving on net neutrality? This stuff is going to happen soon just perusing on your computer, because you’re on the wrong ‘out of network’ sites.
But we should have to pay by the kilobyte, it’s the promotional flat rate deals that need to be ended.
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p>But you’re right on about a need for legislation to protect people from huge surprise bills. Bank fees are also egregious and predatory, and they hit struggling people exclusively, who find that the paycheck they thought they deposited was eaten up by overdraft fees they didn’t know about, and before they know it, instead of having rent money, they find they owe the bank $600, as happened to a friend of mine a few years ago. I tried to rally for some justice for her here at BMG, but I was surprised to be met with unanimous opposition, with everyone saying “she should have read the contract”, of “she should have kept better track of her balance”, it was alarming. I hope your diary goes over better with the smug libertarian corporatists here.
Why should we have to pay by the KB? If the Telcoms can make a satisfactory profit with the promotional deals (and they can, or they wouldn’t be offering them in the first place), why do they get to charge more when they arbitrarily decide to end those deals? Once the hardware is in place, it doesn’t cost them any more to let your kid download a Gigbyte a month than it does to let you talk to his grandma once a week.
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p>Also see: Europe and Asia.
because bandwidth is limited and uses up finite resources. A few kids playing some internet war game on my street makes my web browsing slower, causing the ISP to have to invest in more hardware and cables and deplete more nonrenewable resources in order to compete with the other companies. My use also depletes resources of course, but maybe I’d use less if I paid by the kilobyte. Our use isn’t equal, but we pay the same? And even people who don’t use any internet at all nevertheless pay for the investment, because we all pass our costs on, even demanding lower taxes so they can pay our cable bills.
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p>I think we invest too much in bandwidth. I bet lots of us pay almost $200 bucks a month for smart phone and cable, pay in taxes for other infrastructure arguably equally essential, like roads and schools. Shouldn’t more of that be tax, and go to teachers and doctors and workers and artists?
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p>Also, there is to much inefficiency in web design, and if we paid by the byte, we’d demand lower bandwidth websites, with better client side caching and smarter servers. There is so much redundant downloading now (Soapblox blogs are so frustrating with their slow refreshes of the same data over and over again, and they must require twice as many servers to run).
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p>I wrote this here last year: Tax Internet Use, Ban All Porn
bandwidth isn’t nearly as limited as you’d like to claim, and your complaints about the “internet war game” that “a few kids” on your street play betrays your ignorance. Games like WoW don’t suck up nearly as much bandwidth as, say, people who download movies and other large files — often legally.
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p>At the end of the day, it’s not anyone on your street’s fault that American’s internet is slow, it’s the various cable and broadband companies which refuse to make the same kind of investments companies have made overseas, yet charge us at twice the right for half he service.
So, you’re complaining we don’t have high enough bandwidth, and we pay too much for it? Nice, tea party on, dude! I believe you that more people are probably getting personally rich here than in europe, and less money goes into infrastructure.
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p>And, I’m all for replacing cable companies with a public owned internet that is more secure and private and efficient and concerned with minimizing resource use. I suppose WoW is tightly programmed to minimize response times, and has a lot of data stored locally, so maybe its not bad, and streaming movies and music are the hogs. But whatever, bandwidth should cost more the more you use.
We would be lucky to have dial up modems. I’m not a big supporter of Comcast or Verizon but they do make huge capital investment. Looking at Comcast financials I see they have 23B in fix assets with a return of assets of 3.20% – they have spent lots of money on assets, I have my yearly fight with their customer service BUT they are so much better than the RMV or the Post office.
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p>
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p>No, that wasn’t at all what I was arguing. When I said, “bandwidth isn’t nearly as limited as you’d like to claim,” what made you think I meant the opposite? I argued that our internet was slower and we were paying more for it. That doesn’t mean we have less bandwidth. Bandwidth and speed, while related, are not the same thing.
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p>
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p>I disagree, for the simple fact that it’s really irrelevant. Creating solutions to situations that don’t have problems is only a recipe for worsening the situation or wasting a lot of time and resources.
I don’t recall that diary, nor the response you describe.
because I can’t find it in my comments or diaries here. Withdrawn.
he made it up
The Enron business plan is more and more adopted by the corporatists. Yet these corporate structures aim not to produce better products and services, not for the better well-being of the business, but higher incomes for corporate leadership. Fully enlisted in the schemes are the people’s representatives and government agencies.
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p>Can anyone help from rolling their eyes when General Motors pays off their TARP loan with more TARP funds? (To the applause of our government leaders.) Or the revelation that “watchdog” SEC staff surfs porno while the bankers and investment houses loot the economy? The Federal Reserve teams with Senator Dodd to keep secret any actions of the bank and it is sold to the public as reform? And on and on.
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p>How long can this business model continue? How long before collapse?
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p>
Last Wednesday my e-mail was down for the day. It seems like every Monday that e-mail has issues.
My cell phones are AT&T. A couple of years ago, my cell phone usage shot up astronomically because I was in a nursing home. My link to the outside world and all. My bill quintupled. They worked with us. They put us on a newer, moderately more expensive plan retroactively. AT&T and their predecessor Cingular, put the SERVICE in customer service.
Yes folks, I’m saying something nice, so they must be good.
I had AT&T and found there were too many dead zones in my neighborhood.
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p>What I don’t understand about this story is how Verizon could be so stupid to dig in their heals on this bill, especially after being contacted by the Globe. In return for $18,000 which they probably will never collect, they just bought hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of bad publicity.
The customer is always right – even when they are wrong. AT&T just bought itself a big pile of bad publicity.
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p>
I would reccommend them highly. And if you’re referring to my reputation on BMG, I never would steer anyone wrong on consumer goods. Go ahead bluebloods try to disprove this one. Please forgive my paranoia.
That was a stupid comment of mine – I meant Verizon.
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p>I have noticed that AT&T has some bandwidth problems – mainly where there are a lot of Iphones.
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p>
Just making sure.
Last I looked Verizon had the best signal in the Boston metropolitan area.
I think it is a crime that Verizon should be able to do this, but I don’t think any of the other providers are much better. Regardless of whether the contract terms are fine print or not. It seems that the user has near unlimited liability and that would not be accepted by anyone, if they knew about it and had a choice.
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p>I would advocate that it be required that all service providers allow their customers to limit their liability to a reasonable amount.
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p>I’ve had a recent issue with Verizon and I’m in process of getting rid of them when possible, but I have no allusions that the others are much better.
Read those little inserts that come with your bill. They are notification of changes to your bill.
grrrr
I believe in personal responsibility – but if corporations are persons too, then they also have to exercise some responsibility and common decency. If a corporation wishes to be legally recognized in a state (with the extensive privileges that entails), then it must compete by providing better goods and services at competitive prices, NOT by trickery, trapdoors, or legal labyrinths.
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p>If the contract terms were more transparent, then the company has the ability to set those terms however they want – they can charge by the kb, they can charge by the minute, they can charge by the molecule, I don’t care. They just have to tell us, in plain English. (Or to put it another way: how come right-wingers want to require people to speak English, but not corporations?) Only with proper information can a market function. And right now, corporations often deliberately hide the true information about their contracts, which warps customers’ choices and the competition necessary for the market to work. This isn’t capitalism. It’s a casino, with the house controlling the game and usually winning.
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p>Anybody recommend a progressive legislator who might be interested in working on a bill? This isn’t so far-fetched at all: Massachusetts already has a law forbidding companies from attaching gotcha provisions, fees, and expiration dates to store credit and gift cards, for example. This is a broader application of the same principle.
Verizon forgives balance of $18,000 cellphone bill
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p>However, Verizon continues to peddle the bull.
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p>
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p>As if the Germain family intended to do this. Even if someone were to read and “understand” the terms and conditions, that would not likely prevent this situation from happening. It would be in the best interest of consumers for cell companies to send test messages with warnings of unusual usage, should something like this occur, especially when a youngster has a phone. It would be an inexpensive safety procedure well worth implementing.
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p>In any case, a win for the Germain family, and for consumers as well. Now lets get the safey measures in place.