A Question for the Consumers

[MovingTarget]

Originally posted by: bamacre
How many people here in the USA have a choice in companies that offer Cable TV over fiber optic?

Only the lucky ones.... there are some of us just ouside the more densely populated cities who have only recently gotten a choice other than basic dial-up. Yet others b*tch about not getting 50Mb FIOS for an ourageous $50/month. Broadband policy and subsequent deployment in this country has been waaaay behind for a long time.

 

[Dissipate]

Originally posted by: Bowfinger
The ones I haven't seen mentioned are banking and lending, with their never-ending barrage of fees and consumer-unfriendly T&Cs. Mediocre value and service at best, outright rip-offs at worst. Generally speaking, the bigger the company, the worse the value offered. Couple that with our tax bailout, and they've become the hands-down biggest ripoff of Americans.

Close on their tails is the life insurance industry. Their forte is selling over-priced "investment" vehicles to ignorant, fearful people who would be better served with simple term life products, ideally some sort of cheap group life. Property and casualty insurance is far more straightforward and generally a much better value IMO. Many P&C companies offer atrocious service, however.

Cable and land-line phone companies also tend to offer poor service at inflated prices, mostly due to limited competition. Cell phone companies generally offer better service in my experience, but tend to gouge for add-ons like text messaging. I'd single out Verizon as one of the worst in terms of customer-unfriendly equipment and service offerings, blatantly crippling their phones to force customers into expensive and unnecessary premium services. Maybe some other carriers are equally bad.

Software companies generally are OK on pricing, but often deliver abysmal service. This industry is plagued with companies who seem to think they have some God-given right to abuse their customers. Aside from trying to disclaim any responsibility for selling products that actually function as advertised, we have the whole "software is licensed, not sold" scam. Bullshit! I walked into a retail store and picked it off a shelf. It's mine. Then there are are the never-ending copy (and use) prevention schemes, the gaping security holes, the lack of support, the annual "upgrade" scams (often not upgrades at all, and with some companies essentially disabling older versions), the nonsense license agreements, the bundled spyware, and in at least a couple of cases, the wonderful root kits so helpfully (and silently) included. All in all, an industry that should be ashamed of itself.

Finally, I'll throw in the entertainment industry, specifically the xxAA companies, who offer many of the same abuses as the software industry (brothers in intellectual property abuse). Other delights from these folks include their perpetual copyright grab and their "screw fair use" contempt for their customers.

That's my off-the-cuff list.

Stop complaining, you are getting 50% of a glass of beer, instead of 90% of a shot glass.

 

[OCGuy]

Originally posted by: MovingTarget

Originally posted by: bamacre
How many people here in the USA have a choice in companies that offer Cable TV over fiber optic?

Only the lucky ones.... there are some of us just ouside the more densely populated cities who have only recently gotten a choice other than basic dial-up. Yet others b*tch about not getting 50Mb FIOS for an ourageous $50/month. Broadband policy and subsequent deployment in this country has been waaaay behind for a long time.

If you are trying to compare us to somewhere like Japan, that is rediculous. How small is that island? How dense is the population? It is MUCH easier to roll something out to an island nation.


Infrastructure takes massive investment. Then when they charge $50 for their premium package, you complain and say it is outrageous. They have to recoup the costs, or noone will invest.

 

[BarneyFife]

Grocery stores

I go and pick up a few items and its $25 and everything is downsized. 1.75 quart of ice cream is $5.

Cell phones

It shouldn't cost $40 to get the smallest plan

Cable/Satellite

They both nickle and dime you to death. I'm paying over $70 month with HD and no premium channels.

 

[frostedflakes]

Originally posted by: MovingTarget

Originally posted by: bamacre
How many people here in the USA have a choice in companies that offer Cable TV over fiber optic?

Only the lucky ones.... there are some of us just ouside the more densely populated cities who have only recently gotten a choice other than basic dial-up. Yet others b*tch about not getting 50Mb FIOS for an ourageous $50/month. Broadband policy and subsequent deployment in this country has been waaaay behind for a long time.

To be fair, almost everybody in the US should be able to get "broadband." Cellular data networks are becoming more ubiquitous, and if a person can't get terrestrial services, there's always satellite. IMO there's a fair amount of competition, it's just that a lot of the competition (especially for rural users) sucks.

 

[rudder]

Originally posted by: vi edit

Originally posted by: bamacre
College tuition?

Good call. It's absurb how fast tuition rates have skyrocketed. It's almost $25k a year to go IN STATE to University of IL Champaign/Urbana.

All those university presidents were fighting for that senate seat I see.

 

[Farang]

I was going to say the LSAT because I just shelled out $190 to take it, but with my 2.9 GPA I suppose I should thank them for giving me any hope of going to law school. Instead I will say MP3 players. To date I have spent $650 on them, and got about 3 months of total use. First nano was stolen by ex-gf, zune was lost in the hull of a 737.

 

[First]

Viva la revolution!

 

[Craig234]

Originally posted by: bamacre
We all buy all kinds of goods and services. From shoes to LCD monitors, cars and houses, haircuts to doctor visits. It is really amazing how much money trades hands or goes through the intertubes every day.

My question is pretty simple. With what products and services are you unhappy? Cost to benefit. I'm not talking about comparing different brands or different companies. What do you think is too expensive for what you get in return, or where is the quality in your opinion too low, regardless of what brand or company you choose from which to buy? The answers could be anything, good or service.

Before anyone asks, yes, this is a serious topic.

Two answers off the top of my head:

1. Food. I think that our food industry is too weighted towards the profitability of the manufacturers, leading to unhealthy foods being by far the most available and 'attractive'.

Seems to me this is causing a lot of health problems the profteers don't directly pay for.

Edit: I'd like to clarify that food overall is an outstanding value IMO, apart from the issue above; the low price and amazing selection we have are huge.

2. I think we pay *too little* for too much, because the low price is so often for the wrong reasons at a price paid by someone else - the environment, underpaid labor, etc.

Overall, I think this is a 'dram time' to be a consumer while we have this combination of relative prosperity over others who provide cheap labor, and a temporary wealth based on massive borrowing, masses around the world converting to industrial societies providing very cheap labor in the early phases of that development. It won't last.

I have a Canon printer I bought for $50 - the MP610 - with highly rated print and photo quality, a nice scanner, and LCD display, and more. When you think about the cost to make that printer in terms of *our* economics - our wages - it's absurd. We couldn't begin to make a printer like that without charging several times that amount.

While it may not be the case for this printer, this sort of cheap item also includes the exploitatively cheap obtaining of raw materials fromthird world countries, paying off cooperative regimes that leave the people impoverished; obscenely cheap labor in a factory in some developing nation (like China), who are undermining our own workers' opportunities for enrichment. It reminds me of the well named documentary on Wal-Mart, "The high cost of low prices".

 

[TastesLikeChicken]

Originally posted by: Craig234
I have a Canon printer I bought for $50 - the MP610 - with highly rated print and photo quality, a nice scanner, and LCD display, and more. When you think about the cost to make that printer in terms of *our* economics - our wages - it's absurd. We couldn't begin to make a printer like that without charging several times that amount.

Many companies that sell printers sell them at a loss. They hope to make up the cost in ink sales.

The only service I'm unhappy about is my landline. AT&T was screwing me. I'm changning over to another provider. They'll try to screw me too. Ain't competition a great thing?

 

[Bowfinger]

Originally posted by: Dissipate

Originally posted by: Bowfinger
The ones I haven't seen mentioned are banking and lending, with their never-ending barrage of fees and consumer-unfriendly T&Cs. Mediocre value and service at best, outright rip-offs at worst. Generally speaking, the bigger the company, the worse the value offered. Couple that with our tax bailout, and they've become the hands-down biggest ripoff of Americans.

Close on their tails is the life insurance industry. Their forte is selling over-priced "investment" vehicles to ignorant, fearful people who would be better served with simple term life products, ideally some sort of cheap group life. Property and casualty insurance is far more straightforward and generally a much better value IMO. Many P&C companies offer atrocious service, however.

Cable and land-line phone companies also tend to offer poor service at inflated prices, mostly due to limited competition. Cell phone companies generally offer better service in my experience, but tend to gouge for add-ons like text messaging. I'd single out Verizon as one of the worst in terms of customer-unfriendly equipment and service offerings, blatantly crippling their phones to force customers into expensive and unnecessary premium services. Maybe some other carriers are equally bad.

Software companies generally are OK on pricing, but often deliver abysmal service. This industry is plagued with companies who seem to think they have some God-given right to abuse their customers. Aside from trying to disclaim any responsibility for selling products that actually function as advertised, we have the whole "software is licensed, not sold" scam. Bullshit! I walked into a retail store and picked it off a shelf. It's mine. Then there are are the never-ending copy (and use) prevention schemes, the gaping security holes, the lack of support, the annual "upgrade" scams (often not upgrades at all, and with some companies essentially disabling older versions), the nonsense license agreements, the bundled spyware, and in at least a couple of cases, the wonderful root kits so helpfully (and silently) included. All in all, an industry that should be ashamed of itself.

Finally, I'll throw in the entertainment industry, specifically the xxAA companies, who offer many of the same abuses as the software industry (brothers in intellectual property abuse). Other delights from these folks include their perpetual copyright grab and their "screw fair use" contempt for their customers.

That's my off-the-cuff list.

Stop complaining, you are getting 50% of a glass of beer, instead of 90% of a shot glass.

:roll:

You're an idiot. That is all.

 

[Bowfinger]

Originally posted by: BarneyFife
Grocery stores

I go and pick up a few items and its $25 and everything is downsized. 1.75 quart of ice cream is $5. ...

To be clear, it's not the grocery stores that are shrinking packages. It's the manufacturers. The stores just put them on their shelves.

 

[CADsortaGUY]

I happen to think this excercise is unproductive as it allows people to dwell on the negative and we already have too much of that in our society. If you don't like a service or product - don't buy/use it and move on.
Oh, and don't forget to be thankful/grateful that we all have the freedom to use these goods/services some like to whine about. Sure, not everything is great or near perfect but dwelling on the negative won't get you very far.

IMO ofcourse...

 

[MovingTarget]

Originally posted by: Ocguy31

Originally posted by: MovingTarget

Originally posted by: bamacre
How many people here in the USA have a choice in companies that offer Cable TV over fiber optic?

Only the lucky ones.... there are some of us just ouside the more densely populated cities who have only recently gotten a choice other than basic dial-up. Yet others b*tch about not getting 50Mb FIOS for an ourageous $50/month. Broadband policy and subsequent deployment in this country has been waaaay behind for a long time.

If you are trying to compare us to somewhere like Japan, that is rediculous. How small is that island? How dense is the population? It is MUCH easier to roll something out to an island nation.


Infrastructure takes massive investment. Then when they charge $50 for their premium package, you complain and say it is outrageous. They have to recoup the costs, or noone will invest.

No, I'm not trying to compare the US to Japan or some other densely populated country. I'm comparing areas entirely within the US. Hell, the best thing to happen to Japanese telcom infrastructure was American bombs. They basically had to rewire their country from scratch, whereas the US was still going off its ageing lines for a much longer time. Broadband deployment can be compared implementation-wise to the initial rollout of power and telephony services to rural populations. If we truly had a coordinated policy like we did for these, we would all have had access years ago and would be at better speeds than we are today.

Besides, sattelite networks are hardly a substitute for DSL, Cable, or Fiber connections. Anyone who has had to deal with Directway (Hughes...whatever...) knows this. Cellular networks leave much to be desired due to slow speeds and outrageous costs of data plans (as compared to other services by the same companies or the operating costs of celltowers after the initial investment of erecting them). WiMAX? You'd be lucky to find that in most places. Whatever happened to broadband over power lines anyway?

 

[MovingTarget]

Craig234 mentions food. I think that this might be a good area that we need to reexamine policy due to subsidies and whatnot. See for example white vs wheat rice and flower... The unprocessed versions cost MORE in the grocery stores than their processed counterparts. Derivatives of fruits/vegetables often cost more when they go from the fields to the shelves than from the fields to a myriad of production processes to packaging and then finally to the shelves.

 

[ayabe]

Originally posted by: CADsortaGUY
I happen to think this excercise is unproductive as it allows people to dwell on the negative and we already have too much of that in our society. If you don't like a service or product - don't buy/use it and move on.
Oh, and don't forget to be thankful/grateful that we all have the freedom to use these goods/services some like to whine about. Sure, not everything is great or near perfect but dwelling on the negative won't get you very far.

IMO ofcourse...

Well since you're so content, I've instructed Mistress AutoCad to start charging you double for your Wednesday afternoon spankings.

 

[bamacre]

Originally posted by: CADsortaGUY
I happen to think this excercise is unproductive as it allows people to dwell on the negative and we already have too much of that in our society. If you don't like a service or product - don't buy/use it and move on.
Oh, and don't forget to be thankful/grateful that we all have the freedom to use these goods/services some like to whine about. Sure, not everything is great or near perfect but dwelling on the negative won't get you very far.

IMO ofcourse...

I think you missed the point of the thread.

 

[CADsortaGUY]

Originally posted by: bamacre

Originally posted by: CADsortaGUY
I happen to think this excercise is unproductive as it allows people to dwell on the negative and we already have too much of that in our society. If you don't like a service or product - don't buy/use it and move on.
Oh, and don't forget to be thankful/grateful that we all have the freedom to use these goods/services some like to whine about. Sure, not everything is great or near perfect but dwelling on the negative won't get you very far.

IMO ofcourse...

I think you missed the point of the thread.

Nope, I know where you were going but the negativity extracted by doing this isn't productive. We need less negativity as it just breeds more negativity and resentment...

 

[MovingTarget]

Originally posted by: CADsortaGUY

Originally posted by: bamacre

Originally posted by: CADsortaGUY
I happen to think this excercise is unproductive as it allows people to dwell on the negative and we already have too much of that in our society. If you don't like a service or product - don't buy/use it and move on.
Oh, and don't forget to be thankful/grateful that we all have the freedom to use these goods/services some like to whine about. Sure, not everything is great or near perfect but dwelling on the negative won't get you very far.

IMO ofcourse...

I think you missed the point of the thread.

Nope, I know where you were going but the negativity extracted by doing this isn't productive. We need less negativity as it just breeds more negativity and resentment...

Yes, but having a time/place to really b*tch about things can be a cathartic experience, thus allowing us to remain positive throughout other areas of life...

Just a thought.

 

[Moonbeam]

Originally posted by: CADsortaGUY
I happen to think this excercise is unproductive as it allows people to dwell on the negative and we already have too much of that in our society. If you don't like a service or product - don't buy/use it and move on.
Oh, and don't forget to be thankful/grateful that we all have the freedom to use these goods/services some like to whine about. Sure, not everything is great or near perfect but dwelling on the negative won't get you very far.

IMO ofcourse...

There is a certain pragmatic wisdom to what you have to say. For totally ignorant people this is good advise but, of course, as with all deep issues there is a paradox that is only resolvable at a level of higher understanding.

Assume for a moment that everybody on earth suffers from negative self esteem and that it is so extreme that to consciously be aware of it would be completely overwhelming and lead into instant psychosis and loss of identity, with all the negative consequences of having no self and no real self either. You will have to assume this because you can't actually experience it all at once for the reasons I just said, not to mention the fact that this truth is walled in by the most extensive armor in the universe.

Now assume that those feelings of inferiority were total lies, that while everybody feels totally worthless, in fact there's not one single thing wrong with them, only feeling there is, feelings that were inculcated and are based on lies.

So, given a world full of self haters who are totally unaware of their self hate, and also, naturally totally aware that those feelings are actually lies, it is far better to be optimistic rather than negative. You will only fool yourself more you don't feel bad, strengthen your armor against how you really feel, and you will be supporting the notion there's nothing wrong with you anyway. This is better than believing and succumbing to the ficking lies that you are worthless.

The problem, of course, is that, while it is possible for some of great faith and little ego to surrender their lives to God, via some religion or another, it doesn't happen very often.

Alternatively, one can go into the negative all the way, allow it all the way out, and relive the traumatic situations that put it in place, see what the lies actually were, and know on a personal and total way that they were lies. Such a person ceases to exist in the ordinary way. Such a person becomes a different kind of being, a person who Knows He's OK, a person totally free of the ego, just like the religious saint, but without a need for faith.

So the good part of a positive attitude is that it has positive effects, but negative ones in other dimensions.

Personally, I think the time has come for the rubber to meet the road, for humanity to get into therapy instead of religion. It is much easier to feel the worst person in the world when you know it's a lie and you don't delude yourself with phony positive thinking.

Of course this is my counter-opinion, but one which includes a much deeper understanding.

 

[Moonbeam]

I think the Postal Service is a tremendous deal. I wish they'd turn over to them our medical care. The doctor knocks twice at the door. "Hello, my dear Patron, how do you feel. Have you tried ginger tea?"

 

[Craig234]

Originally posted by: TastesLikeChicken

Originally posted by: Craig234
I have a Canon printer I bought for $50 - the MP610 - with highly rated print and photo quality, a nice scanner, and LCD display, and more. When you think about the cost to make that printer in terms of *our* economics - our wages - it's absurd. We couldn't begin to make a printer like that without charging several times that amount.

Many companies that sell printers sell them at a loss. They hope to make up the cost in ink sales.

The only service I'm unhappy about is my landline. AT&T was screwing me. I'm changning over to another provider. They'll try to screw me too. Ain't competition a great thing?

Fair enough, but it applies to other items without that issue. Take the 9800 GS video card for $38 available now, take the radio alarm clock at Target for $4.99.

My landline is AT&T...

I haven't found a good deal on a landline, but my long distance is with CREDO/working assets to support liberal groups.

 

[CADsortaGUY]

Originally posted by: MovingTarget

Originally posted by: CADsortaGUY

Originally posted by: bamacre

Originally posted by: CADsortaGUY
I happen to think this excercise is unproductive as it allows people to dwell on the negative and we already have too much of that in our society. If you don't like a service or product - don't buy/use it and move on.
Oh, and don't forget to be thankful/grateful that we all have the freedom to use these goods/services some like to whine about. Sure, not everything is great or near perfect but dwelling on the negative won't get you very far.

IMO ofcourse...

I think you missed the point of the thread.

Nope, I know where you were going but the negativity extracted by doing this isn't productive. We need less negativity as it just breeds more negativity and resentment...

Yes, but having a time/place to really b*tch about things can be a cathartic experience, thus allowing us to remain positive throughout other areas of life...

Just a thought.

I agree there may be a time and place but this was a prompting to search and think negatively out of the gate. I'm not a big believer in purposely whipping up negativity.

 

[bamacre]

This is P&N, the home of negativity.

 

[Moonbeam]

The way to escape a capsized ship is to dive down. Positive thinkers are just bumping their heads on the hull enjoying a pocket of air.