About
What is Customers' Revenge?
- A place to post opinions, advice and rants. You can find reviews and advice scattered all over the Internet, mostly on sites that sell products, buried in a thread on some discussion group, or on a this-company-sucks page. Some of it is fun, some useful, some neither. I think it would be a lot better if there was one place you could go to get advice from your fellow netizen on which products or companies to seek or avoid and how to get the best deals.
- An attempt to wrestle a little power to the common people. Dealing with a bank? An airline? A utility company? Government? If you're like me then you sometimes feel dirty afterwards. Most of us know that we are checking our self-respect at the door when we deal with certain companies. We take what we're offered and have no real response if we think we're getting ripped-off. We the consumers drive the engines of every company and government in existence and I hate that many of them think they can bully us, cheat us, and take us for granted.
What Problem Are You Trying To Fix?
Too many companies view the common person as a lion eyes the wildebeast. They know better than you how much money is in your wallet and as soon as they can get their hooks into you they will take as much as they can. Sometimes I feel like I've been mugged when I buy something. We've all been sold a garbage product, or we find we need a bunch of other products to make it work, or we're led to believe one thing but once they get our money they don't feel the need to fullfil the original deal.
I want each of us to have the power of Charles Bronson and if we get mugged we should have the ability to go vigilante on the corporation.
Why can't I just be more careful?
The world is complicated and an individual can't educate themselves about everything. We just buy a litre of gas not really understanding how it can be that every independent gas station in town is priced within a couple of pennies or why the price goes up on Fridays or how it can be that the price of a barrel of oil goes up and immediately the refined gasoline in the station becomes more expensive even though the fuel was already in the underground tank yesterday.
Companies take advantage of individuals because companies are specifically designed to get wealthy off the backs of individuals. All day every day in every company there are many smart people dreaming up ways to get your money. Some companies do it by creating valuable products that make your life better. But a lot of companies, perhaps they should be known as the evil companies, spend all their effort thinking about how they can force you to pay more for less or nothing at all. These evil companies don't care for you one iota except to the extent that you have cash in your bank account or room on your credit card. You're a victim to them.
Companies have several advantages against you if they turn evil:
- The advantage of numbers: Companies have many employees that are all working together to get your money. You obviously only have your own wits as a resource. It is like playing chess against a team of chess players.
- The advantage of time: Companies pay their people to scheme for 8 hours a day 5 days a week. As an individual, you usually only deal with companies for short stretches of time; a few minutes at the bank, maybe a couple of hours if you're shopping for a car. It's like playing a chess game where you have 1 minute to decide your move against someone who has a day.
- The advantage of money: Companies have much more money than individuals and this money is spent on advertising, lobbying, buying out competitors, and a thousand other things. What's more, money makes individual customers less important. They don't really need your particular sale, nor do they really need to care about negotiating or dealing with your problems. If they lose one sale then no big deal. In fact they've probably calculated exactly the best level of evil behavior that gets the most cash. It's like playing chess against someone with 1000 pieces when you have 16.
- The advantage of science: Advertising is applied psychology. Pricing is calculus. Companies use sophisticated methods to figure out how much of a beating you can take before they can't get any more money out of you. This is like playing chess against a grand-master with the power of mind control. It is tough to win chess games like those and that's why we need to bring some advantage back to the regular folks.
The Goals of this Site
I dream that this site will be like a union for the consumer. Together we will match their advantages with our own. We will band together to identify and punish the evil-doers and reward the ethical companies. We really do have the final power in our dollars. Companies survive on our money and if we only deal with companies that treat us how we want then eventually those are the only companies that exist. We need to tell each other how to do it, and then we need to have the courage and self-respect to never give a dollar to one of the filthy evil companies.
- I want a trusted place for people to go to help them make buying decisions, where individuals need the most protection.
- I want no individual to ever do business with a dishonest or unethical company. When we buy something we are engaged in a partnership and it should be a good deal for both sides. I want any company to suffer if it thinks good business is to make money by lying, incompetence, or bullying.
- I want the companies to change their ways and become better. I would prefer if the bad companies just felt some pain and then realized they are doing wrong, changed their ways, and became decent. But if they went out of business then that's fine too -- the landscape as a whole would still move in the right direction.
- I want to gain the therapeutic value of venting anger and gaining some vigilante justice. At the same time it can be entertaining for the rest of us to see a company getting a deserved roasting. So let's all make a difference. If you've been burnt, help your fellow human avoid it and convict that company at the same time. If you've found a gem then please lead the rest of us to it.
