Live data from Hacker News

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

theguardian.com

111–120 of 192 posts

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

#111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's more a case for why the US system of government is a failure.

Which system of government is capable of operating at the scale of the US without going sideways? It's not the EU, look at what just happened with Chat Control. Maybe the problem is attempting to regulate at that scale to begin with.

Chat control is not relevant to consumer protection, which is what the article is about.

Of course, Americans also have much worse privacy rights than Europeans do, Chat Control notwithstanding. GDPR gives Europeans the right to delete their personal data. In the US, data brokers routinely launder highly personal information about Americans and nothing is done. Good luck figuring out how to delete that.

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

#112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is actually making the case for why agencies like the CFPB are a bad way to go about this. If that was a class action lawsuit instead, the plaintiff's lawyers aren't going to drop the case just because there was a change of administrations.

It's more a case for why the US system of government is a failure.

The US government is not a failure. It simply does not care about consumers. Those are two different things.

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

#113

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.

Gmail was a great product because they doled out a GB of storage for free. Agreed that they introduced other features people liked.

As a user, you were faceless. I have a vague memory from the early Gmail days. I'm pretty sure they charged me $5 to contact support.

Customer focus includes more than having a good product, though having a good product is a component. The business model Google chose (it was a choice) for Gmail wasn't compatible with focusing on Google's customers.

That said, there were other good examples. I chose Gmail because I believe it was one of the best known products of the era.

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

#114
post #101

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…

15% was standard—15 years ago. Then it ticked up to 18%. Then 20%. I've heard that some people are saying it should be 25%...but that was before I moved out of the country, to where tipping is purely for exceptional service.

But see, this is the problem with tipping: it's all informal, so what's "standard" can only be determined by actually talking to people and getting an overall average. I bet there are a lot of people who still think the "standard" is 15% (as it was through most of my life)—or even 10%.

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

#115

Everything is a scam now. You can’t exchange money for products or services anymore. We just exchange money for scams.

I can't speak for "US consumers" broadly, but this is 100% why I'm angry as a consumer. Everything is a fucking scam. And often also a subscription for something that doesn't warrant being a subscription, and signing up is one click, cancelling is a written letter or a 3 hour long phone call (because see again the part where "Everything is a fucking scam").

It's incredible that a fucking TV is also a scam. I have an LG TV that only works as a dumb screen and it's really beautiful but now when I look at it, I don't see the technical marvel, I think "is someone at LG reading screencaps of my conversations and 4chan threads" because recently I got aware that this could be a very real possibility. And it's not about the TV itself, it's about having to be on 24/7 in order to avoid scams. You cannot just exchange one unit of money for one unit of product or service that gives you one unit of happiness, you have to first get PhD in avoiding scams. And often you watch yourself fall for the scam even though you're aware of it because realistically, you have no other options. Sometimes I need to buy something in a supermarket nearby and then it's "do you sir have our cattle-tracking ad-infested resource-draining attention-grabbing fucking-annoying useless dehumanizing app?" and if you don't you pay €5 extra because fuck you that's why, there's no winning move here. I sometimes go to a shop 30 minutes further down just to avoid the humiliation ritual.

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

#116
post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 pro…

"Ethnic Chinese" is a term covering 1.45 billion people. I don't even know where one would find a definition for "ethnic English", but if you take the NHS' "ethnic British" which ridiculously excludes even Irish heritage, I can see how you'd come to 50%.

A reasonable comparison would be to look at "Ethnic European", covering roughly 1.2 billion people.

> london's trust level and prosperity have become a shadow of their former selves

As someone who traveled the world a bit and lived for a decade in London, I'd beg to differ without further elaboration.

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

#117

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.

Customer focus means not just resolving issues or having a reachable customer service, it can also be pre-empting the need to reach out to customer service by making the product issue free as much as possible.

Gmail in its early stage had a simple surface area. These days a Google account could mean a gateway to entire digital life for some. It requires much more focus and responsibility to handle and Google never had plans to do any of that from the beginning.

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

#118

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…

There has been a concerted push by the far right to delegitimize the idea of "human decency." It started to trickle into our mainstream culture by way of aspects of toxic masculinity, and "cringe culture"—can't be seen to be enjoying things unironically! Emotions (other than rage or contempt) aren't "manly"!

But with the rise of Trump through the mid-to-late 2010s, it became much more widespread and broad in scope: Dignity, respect (in the sense of "treat other people like humans"), and politeness are all "woke", and all that matters is me, me, me. Being a bully is the highest form of social capital.

And now with enshittification spreading to all our commercial services, the same basic ideas are expanded to the corporate realm. Customers are just numbers; "customer service" is for bots to provide; lock them in so they can't leave and it doesn't matter how terrible the service is.

It's not just cooperation that's needed—though you're absolutely right that it is the basis for our entire civilization; it's respect and dignity. Treating everyone you meet as if they're someone whose daily experience you care about, at least inasmuch as your interactions with them affect it.

It's never too late to shift a culture, and individuals can make an individual difference—very much in the sense of the old story about the girl throwing starfish back into the sea. But what's really needed is a cultural movement to restore dignity to our interactions, and I'm afraid I'm clueless as to how one starts one of those.

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

#119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Gmail was a great product because they doled out a GB of storage for free. Agreed that they introduced other features people liked. As a user, you were faceless. I have a vague memory from the early Gmail days. I'm pretty sure they charged me $5 to contact support. Customer focus includes more than having a good product, though having a good product is a component. The business model Google chose (it was a choice) fo…

Too late to edit my comment.

I'm embarrassed to say, I just realized the big problem with my original comment, and it is hackneyed: the end-users probably weren't the customers.

I doubt Google was cavalier about its relationships with advertisers back then.

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

#120
post #101

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…

15% was standard—15 years ago. Then it ticked up to 18%. Then 20%. I've heard that some people are saying it should be 25%...but that was before I moved out of the country, to where tipping is purely for exceptional service. But see, this is the problem with tipping: it's all informal, so what's "standard" can only be determined by actually talking to people and getting an overall average. I bet there are a lot of pe…

The debate should have been about why there is even a "standard" tip not what the standard percentage is.

I think the vocal minority advocating for tipping are probably the ones that receive (unaccountable) higher tips while the ones that are scraping by would actually feel more comfortable with a good wage than unpredictable tips.

Post reply on HN