Slashdot Mirror
Consumer Revolt Spurred Via the Internet
sas-dot writes "UK's newspaper Independent outlines the brewing consumer revolt being fomented on the web. 'Consumer militancy' is becoming ever more common, as individuals join forces on the internet to fight back against the state and big business. Businesses from banks to soccer clubs have been the target of these groups, in each case facing the fury of consumers who feel they have been wronged. For example, 'A mass revolt has left the high street banks facing thousands of claims from customers seeking to claw back some of the £4.75bn levied annually on charges for overdrafts and bounced cheques. More than one million forms demanding refunds have been downloaded from a number of consumer websites. The banks are settling out of court, often paying £1,000 a time.' Are these kinds of organized 'advocate mobs' going to be the future of internet activism?"
Our businesses are smarter and have forseen the trend. They are rallying against the consumers who believe they have rights.
I'm actually surprised at the apathy shown towards the Bank of America fiasco of exploiting loopholes in the law to allow them to open accounts and credit cards for illegal aliens!!
I figured there would have been a much larger rush of people to move their accounts away from them.
I guess aiding and abetting law breakers just isn't enough to get the typical US citizen's ire up....
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
A few months ago, I bought a nice mountain bike from a well-known vendor. Right from the start I had issues with the front crank. So I went online and founds hundreds of people having exactly the same problem on the very same model. It gave me a much stronger case to get the shop to replace the problematic part by another brand: they could not claim that it was my fault. So yeah, online consumer activist is good, but you already knew that, right ?
Nobox: Only simple products.
Yes, yes they will. See the current bruhaha over Bank of America and their giving credit cards to illegal aliens as well as allowing unapproved documents to be used to open accounts.
Even, gasp!, Michelle Malkin is getting into scrum and accusing the Bush administration of ignoring and condoning the actions of Bank of America.
One need only do searches for things like "lawsuit Match.com" to see that (maybe) consumers will be getting the upper hand. Until businesses bribe, er, lobby, Congress to protect them that is.
We will bankrupt ourselves in the vain search for absolute security. -- Dwight D. Eisenhower
We are the people. Individually we are weak. Together we rule the world.
Those who oppress us cannot do so unless we help them. Those who go against our-selves rampant, shall suffer the only possible consequence.
As humanity learns to speak with one another, breaking down barriers of distance, language, and culture, the existing governmental powers are going to have a very interesting dillema on their hands. One people, one world, one government.
-GiH
The preceding has been your dose of political idealism for the day. Overdosiong on political idealism may lead to conspiracy theories, or dellusions of power. Use only as recomneded.
RE: that British bank scandal, the courts there determined that banks were breaking the law. This was then reported by the news (such as BBC) who published handy tips on reclaiming unfair fees.
Is it thus fair to call a press which publishes information about this issue, along with all the people who makes use of that information, an "advocate mob" out to bully corporations out of their profits? In fact, who is the more organized here? The private companies with enough funds to hire PR agents, attorneys, and lobbyists, or those citizens who assert their rights as legislated by parliament and enforced by the courts?
Are these kinds of organized 'advocate mobs' going to be the future of internet activism?"
Wait until such a "mob" hits Slashdot and demands journalism.
No it's not, because, frankly it doesn't affect anyone I know. People don't care. I don't care.
If an illegal alien can go and open a bank account, it's fine by me. Bank of America is not in the law enforcement business, it's in the banking business. This alien is supporting an American business by opening that bank account.
No, let's talk about predatory lending, sneaky credit card terms, deceitful charges, etc.
Let's talk about MBNA (now part of Bank of America) and BofA being some of the heaviest hitters to push through new bankruptcy law that makes everyone a peon to credit card companies, regardless of circumstances! Let's talk about the fact that an amendment to limit credit card interest rates to 30% (yes, that's thirty f'ing percent) was rejected last yaer. Yes, credit card companies did not want their interest rate limited to a cut-throat ceiling of 30%!
Let's talk about my platinum Bank of America card moving from 2 late payments (by even a day!) in 6 months to 2 late payments in 12 months to 1 late payment in 12 months before they bump your rate from a good APR to an insane 20%+ default APR. Let's talk about two-cycle billing (my roommate, who normally pays off his entire balance got bitten by this because he miscalculated and payed off a $1 less than the balance)
Let's talk about CapitalOne (and some other predatory lenders) not reporting your credit limit to the credit reporting agencies, which is ILLEGAL to do, but there is not enough activism or pressure to change that.
So yeah, let's talk about that, and then you can tell me why I should care that Bank of America issues a bank account to an illegal alien, when there are all these other topics out there that affect every damn American.
Big business profits motivate Bush administration's every single action:
* ignoring BofA bruhaha
* encouraging "guest worker status" to permit legal under-minimum-wage labor
* signing the bankruptcy bill
* pushing ethanol fuel (big ethanol lobby)
* against discount drugs from Canada
* crazy cronyism in Iraq (KBR, Halliburton)
I mean, there is very little that's not big business motivated.
That's "football clubs" to the rest of us.
:-)
Disclaimer: I am an American.
Ah, but see, by saying "soccer" it removes all the ambiguity. Most non-Americans know what "soccer" is, they just think it is an incorrect term to describe that sport with 2 goals and a buncha guys kicking a ball around. Had the poster said "football" then the American population would assume the summary was referring to American football while the non-american population wouldn't be confused for they would expect to see "American football" to describe football and "football" to describe soccer; a clever non-American would however assume that since this is an Amermican website that the summarry was actually referring to American footbal by saying "football". So had the summary said "football" to describe soccer, only non-presumptuous non-American's would infer the correct meaning...By saying soccer, everyone infers the correct meaning, and a few people get pissed off and/or roll their eyes.
P.S. I'm not arguing over which is the more correct term, thats a useless debate...Seeing as I am an American and a Slashdotter, I suppose I'm supposed to be double-arrogant and double-argumentative. . so yeah, soccer is THE correct term
If you are about to mod me down, keep in mind that this post was most likely sarcastic.
Wrong! The football you are referring is aka soccer or "Association Football". There is also rugby football, etc. So your bigot-like comment is way off. See quote from Wikipedia:
"The rules of football were codified in England by the Football Association in 1863, and the name association football was coined to distinguish the game from the other forms of football played at the time, specifically rugby football. The term soccer first appeared in the 1880s as a slang abbreviation of Association football, often credited to Charles Wreford-Brown.[18]
Today the sport is known by a number of names throughout the English-speaking world, the most common being football and soccer. The term used depends largely on the need to differentiate the sport from other types of football played in a community. Football is the term used by FIFA, the sport's world governing body, and the International Olympic Committee. For more details of naming throughout the world, please refer to the main articles above."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Football_(soccer)
Nope, In Ireland football is a game played with 15 players a side and run by the GAA
Soccer is something played by delicate flowers who fall in a breeze and generally bring disgrace upon themselves and their nation and shouldn't be confused with sport being more in the realm of performance art.
Though footie as played in Oz seems suited to a bunch of ex-crims, they really shouldn't be allowed abroad to perpetrate International rules on others ;)
"Linux is for noobs"-The new MS fud strategy
Japanese: sakkaa
Score one for the bad guys! Yee-haw!
My solution has been to refer to soccer as "unamerican football." Things are a bit different with handball, though. American-style handball is either "handball" or "racquetless racquetball," while team handball is now either "handsoccer" or "dry water polo."
Eloi are stupid, throw morlocks at them!
Why don't you ask all english speaking nations?
Australia: Soccer
Canada: Soccer
USA: Soccer
New Zealand: Soccer
Britan: who cares, you all suck at it anyway!
We should also consider the evolution of the sport since its birth. Back in the day, leather helmets were worn, with minimal padding. This was in the days long before super agents and scouts were hand picking the biggest, meanest ogres they could find. Long before the days where a bone shattering hit was expected on every tackle. Give me the best runningback from the early days of football, and I'll laugh my ass off as he gets trampled to death 10 out of 10 times by the most mediocre backfielder in the NFL.
The modern American football pad set evolved from intense competition, where everyone was looking for a better edge. However, it is my opinion that the inception of hard plactic components that spurred our current suit of armor look. Would you rather get speared in the gut by a guy wearing a thick, soft leather helmet, or a guy wearing a bulletproof shell on his head? Thus it became necessary to wear hard plastic shoulders as well as elbow, knee and girdle pads.
As far as the purists accross the pond mocking American football, I say, if you hadn't spent the majority of the 20th century without 2 nickels to rub together, your rugby would have evolved similarly. If rugby was a billion dollar industry like American football, you would be importing only the most ferocious animals alive to play the game. Competition would spur the need for stronger, lighter protection, and eventually, the only difference between American football and rugby would be that nifty little gay pride celebration you chaps call a scrum.
Raging in an online forum won't do anything for the world around you. To see change, you must take action.
Apparently, in the cases mentioned in the article, businesses were doing things that prompted their customers to leave when they found out that what they were faced with was "policy" instead of just "bad luck".
Market transparency is great ... it forces businesses to be honest and to actually compete on value instead of relying on (modest) barriers (including ignorance) to keep their customers. If a business uses practices that hurt it when the public finds out about it (as was the case here), can those practices be either good or reasonable? What's not to like?
And look at the flip side of the coin ... if people are happy with the way a business works they will write about that too.
As a purist from across the pond your plasticy standing about game might produce a load of hugely muscled ogres but for strength, stamina, endurance and speed you'd be better off with rugby players. I just read that your teams are actually 2 seperate teams because your players just can't hack playing the full match ! Incredible, especially since they stop for breaks every 5 seconds and those girlish gossipy chats they always seem to be having.