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Why are US consumers so angry? It's not just high prices

theguardian.com

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Re: Why are US consumers so angry? It's not just high prices

#101

Post by monksy »

I mean that's super easy.

Go to a restaurant. Oh you better tip 20-30-50% (Because thats how they hide the bill, and put the lowest value on there). Bad service? YOU MONSTER YOU TIPPED 15% (15% is standard, and on top of higher prices- that is more money.. service+restaurant owners basically forced a 5%+ pay raise for no value). On top of that.. oh no menus.. get your own device so you can order from us.

Walk into a grocer.. no cashier so you can avoid the stupid self checkouts, oh wait now they want you to comply to scan to get out. Don't do that you'll get some employee trying to lecture you about "required behavior". (That was in the Freiberg (Germany) grocer) Not doing that. (Also apparently thats in the Edeka in the Munich airport as well)

Go to Walmart, they brought back receipt checkers at times. And they get pissy when you tell them to go pound sand.

Overall, security guards at these places have such an ego and power trip that affects the average honest customer.

Removing checkout staff for self checkout machines that grade and judge you on your cashier role. Yet you don't get paid.

Let's not forget that Walgreens over exagerated the loss.. and then ramped up their money recovery systems to lock up items + raise the prices. Then they admitted they were crappy.

Re: Why are US consumers so angry? It's not just high prices

#102

Post by monksy »

SoftTalker wrote: post #14
qwerty_clicks wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Processes are hollow and some AI isn’t making my life any better. Goods are junk and there are few examples of common physical craftsmanship in the marketplace. MAGA just want a well made jacket but they are on a life line of Walmart wages and goods. I get it. Rage is appropriate yet misguided.

Rage is not approprate in most cases. It gets your blood pressure and adrenaline spiking, but doesn't do anything to fix the problem. It probably makes it worse because it clouds rational thought. Cheap goods have always been junk. Buy less, better stuff. Buy once, cry once.

At this point I seriously don't agree with you.

Considering cheap "junk" from China has gotten a heck of a lot better and competitive.

However the average good in the US has been overly inflated.

Re: Why are US consumers so angry? It's not just high prices

#104

Post by nunez »

cco wrote: post #99
dyauspitr wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t think a high trust society is compatible with modernity. In my opinion, a high trust society comes from a relative naivety in most of the population that just sort of did what their grandparents did without thinking too much about it. In an “information” inundated populace, it becomes very hard to have a common culture which is the absolute basis for a high trust society. Maintaining a common culture isn’t ea…

> it becomes very hard to have a common culture Counter point: culture has been compressed, not widened, in the last 60 years. Accents have gone away, we listen to the same music, food has homogenized. By almost any measure, culture across the US has become a monoculture compared to any time in its history. I don't think your point is necessarily wrong, but how do you square the above?

Accents have gone away?

Re: Why are US consumers so angry? It's not just high prices

#105

Post by jmward01 »

dyauspitr wrote: post #77
rkagerer wrote: post #45

This all comes down to humane treatment of your fellow human beings. I grew up in an era where that was a core expectation of our culture. But I see that tenet degrading in various ways - how we broadcast our views on social media (reduced empathy), how we interact in the real world (less patience and understanding), the polarization of our politics (less compromise and thus less effectiveness), and how organizations…

I don’t think a high trust society is compatible with modernity. In my opinion, a high trust society comes from a relative naivety in most of the population that just sort of did what their grandparents did without thinking too much about it. In an “information” inundated populace, it becomes very hard to have a common culture which is the absolute basis for a high trust society. Maintaining a common culture isn’t ea…

> it becomes very hard to have a common culture which is the absolute basis for a high trust society.

I think a large set of problems have come from this statement. We have, over time, become more intolerant of other cultures which is directly related to trust. Excluding the other isn't the path we need to take. We need to get back on the path where we can include other cultures.

Re: Why are US consumers so angry? It's not just high prices

#106

Post by dlcarrier »

aucisson_masque wrote: post #95
vatsachak wrote: post #29

The Amazon app is unusable. I don't know what they are doing to it but today it wouldn't let me add more than 4 items. Also the design choices suck; I have always accidentally ordered to the wrong address because Amazon uses a "default address". A good rule of design; assume that the user doesn't think about things that they don't explicitly select. They also just advertise cheap crap and the app is so maximalist it…

I don't know what you are speaking about You have millions of competitors. From small business to big shopping centers, online resellers,...

Not to mention that everyone from Walmart to what's left of Sears has online marketplaces to directly compete with Amazon's. Also, eBay never went away, with more than 85% of their sales being through fixed-price listings, like on Amazon's marketplace.

I know multiple people who don't buy from Amazon because they think Amazon is undercutting the competition. I don't buy from Amazon, because other markets are more competitive and have lower prices. The chance of Amazon having a lower price than eBay or Aliexpress are so low that it's not worth my time to look.

Re: Why are US consumers so angry? It's not just high prices

#107

Post by nunez »

vatsachak wrote: post #29

The Amazon app is unusable. I don't know what they are doing to it but today it wouldn't let me add more than 4 items. Also the design choices suck; I have always accidentally ordered to the wrong address because Amazon uses a "default address". A good rule of design; assume that the user doesn't think about things that they don't explicitly select. They also just advertise cheap crap and the app is so maximalist it…

Buying direct and not using the app is an option!

Re: Why are US consumers so angry? It's not just high prices

#108

Post by thin_carapace »

317070 wrote: post #91
dyauspitr wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t think a high trust society is compatible with modernity. In my opinion, a high trust society comes from a relative naivety in most of the population that just sort of did what their grandparents did without thinking too much about it. In an “information” inundated populace, it becomes very hard to have a common culture which is the absolute basis for a high trust society. Maintaining a common culture isn’t ea…

A datapoint that points to the contrary: - Singapore pre-1965 was a low trust, racist society. The tensions were so bad that in 1964 there were racial riots. - Today, after a lot of immigration, within 1-2 generations, Singapore became a high-trust society. Similar stories in South Korea and Taiwan. In all 3 cases, the trust came recently, within 1-2 generations, and from different approaches of the state. They combi…

singapore is an authoritarian state (ie. trust is forced) that presents a homogenous population, where after 2 generations of immigration, over three quarters of singapores populace are still ethnic chinese. let us now examine london's population and how it changed within 1 generation. london consisted of 90% ethnic english in the 1990s, nowadays this figure sits around 50%. concurrently, london's trust level and prosperity have become a shadow of their former selves. perhaps this occurred because england was not authoritarian enough?

Re: Why are US consumers so angry? It's not just high prices

#109

Post by aesthesia »

thomassmith65 wrote: post #79

25 years ago, 'customer focus' was the buzz word. Gmail (and similar products) killed it. The internet made it possible for a company to serve hundreds of millions of people without the overhead of listening to, or supporting, or giving much of a shit about them. "Why are you complaining? It's free!" Gmail envy makes it seem like you're some underachieving sucker if you bend over backwards to deliver a great customer…

I'm not sure Gmail is the right example here. When it came out, Gmail was way better than the other free email services (Hotmail, Yahoo, etc). It was the product that bent over backwards to deliver a great customer experience.

Re: Why are US consumers so angry? It's not just high prices

#110

Post by imartin2k »

I am only commenting from afar (haven’t been in the US since around 10 yrs ago, but consuming a lot of US centric information), but could it be that the US economy has simply become too extractional? In my eyes, healthy capitalism needs a balance between profit-seeking and customer-satisfying. And at least from what I read and hear, the balance is now gone, with consumers being nickled and dimed while the quality of products and services going down. I am thinking of all the hotel junk fees for example, or how airlines keep segmenting customers so everybody gets exactly the lowest level of experience they can cope with, while paying as much as possible.
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