The overloaded consumer
ONCE UPON A TIME, being an American consumer was a pretty uncomplicated affair. There was a lot of stuff to be bought, or at least coveted, and the only question was what you could afford. If you got something you didn’t like, you brought it back. Sometimes you even got a refund.
Nowadays being a consumer requires exhaustive research using obscure websites, not to mention a working knowledge of the latest FTC regulations and recent developments in contract law. And not only for major purchases but for everyday items such as phones or home-delivered bottled water or, as Eliot Spitzer reminds us, Internet service. Spitzer, the New York attorney general, announced Wednesday that America Online had agreed to pay $1.25 million to settle allegations that it made canceling its service too difficult for its customers.
We’re glad Spitzer is so vigilant. But let’s not kid ourselves: It’s not just that it’s too hard to cancel Internet or cellphone or cable service, it’s that it is too hard to understand what you’re buying in the first place. The great consumer-marketing complex that runs the nation has so thoroughly vanquished its enemy -- otherwise known as its customers -- that small defeats like Spitzer’s settlement hardly matter.
The strategy is deceptively simple: Bury the consumer in information. Then, when he protests some charge or feature or requirement, you can say it was all explained in his “terms of service” or user guide or on the CD that came with the little booklet slipped into the side of the box. Even better, get him to agree to a contract, so if he complains, he can’t do much about it except pay you to ignore his complaint. The strategy is most common with electronics and computers, and it achieves near perfection in the cellphone industry, with its bewildering array of charges, surcharges and adjustments (and that’s just the service; the phones themselves are accompanied by small, cube-like manuals).
The true brilliance of this approach, of course, is that all this information comes at our own request. If only we knew enough to ask for less.
