Thursday I wrote about how more than 50 percent of inflation is caused by corporate price gouging and wondered why politicians don’t talk about it and news organizations don’t cover it. Friday I was going to write about the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau suing Acima and its former chief executive officer Aaron Allred for illegal lending activities.
It’s amazing that corporate price gouging gets such little attention. It’s responsible for more than 50 percent of inflation that’s causing consumers so much stress and hardship. However, it gets little publicity. Accountable.US, a consumer watchdog group, reports lots of information on this, but I seldom see it in the press. Here are a few examples:
What’s surveillance pricing? It’s when a company looks at information about you and sets the price of an item or service you want to buy based on that information. The FTC issued orders to eight companies offering surveillance pricing. It wants to know about the possible impacts these practices have on privacy, competition, and consumer protection.
Consumers need to read ingredient labels carefully to avoid brominated vegetable oil or BVO because, although the U.S. Food and Drug Administration finally banned it, products containing BVO may remain for sale on store shelves. BVO has mainly been used to help stabilize citrus flavorings in sodas, sports drinks, and energy drinks.
The National Association of Realtors settlement of a class action lawsuit, scheduled to be carried out by August 17, requires realtors to obtain buyer signatures on home buyer contracts. The $418 million settlement did away with the traditional agent’s commission of 5-6 percent, which should lead to more negotiation, more competition, and lower costs.
Although I’m used to the fact that customer service these days is abysmal, my experiences on a hot day Monday about made my head explode. I’m shopping for a new garden shed. I don’t have a very big space so I’m looking for a metal shed 4 feet by 6 feet. I like blue, so after lots of research, I headed off to Lowe’s with my contractor.
Buying a used car instead of a new one will probably save you money. However, finding, researching, and negotiating to buy a used car online can be difficult. Online sellers advertise they can make car purchases cheaper and easier, but some of them use tactics that could end up costing you time and money.
Every year I write about it and hundreds of other journalists do too. However, thousands of people continue to injure themselves with fireworks around July Fourth every year and deaths continue to occur. A new report from the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission highlights the hazards posed by consumer use of fireworks.
Consumers are in a poor position in the economy, because corporations spend so much on advertising and they donate billions of dollars to influence government to do their bidding making products and services more expensive and less safe. Now, the U.S. Supreme Court has made another decision that will reduce consumer “power” even more.
