Why does the USA have so few legal protections for ordinary people, and how can we change that?
Why does the USA have so few legal protections for ordinary people, and how can we change that?
I'm just a regular person making about $70K a year in a big city, and I've recently felt incredibly powerless dealing with private companies. For instance, my landlord’s auto-pay system had a glitch that excluded my pet rent and water bill. I ended up with over $1,000 in late fees. Despite hours on the phone, it turns out their system doesn’t really do auto-pay and requires a fixed amount instead of covering the full rent. It feels like a scam, and my options are to pay the fees or potentially spend a fortune on legal action.
Another frustrating experience was trying to cancel my pest control service. I had to endure a 40-minute call followed by 35 minutes of arguing, just to finally cancel. There’s no online cancellation option, and the process felt like a timeshare sales pitch.
Why do ordinary people seem so unprotected against these shady practices, and how can we change this? How does one person even start to address these issues?
The country was founded by slave owners. After that we had various "industry barons" like railroads, petroleum, automobiles, etc. Now we have multinational corporations (with larger budgets and more power than several countries) calling the shots in congress. It's always been like this. Post-WWII provided a brief respite, but that limited run of the "American Dream" was temporary and no longer exists.
Part of the solution would be: worker cooperatives. We need a lot more of those. It won't solve everything, but it's a really good start.
I finally was able to cancel a Telus home security service after they tried to put me in a 3 yr contract. I finally was able to cancel. I sent the equipment back and then they started charging me other monthly fees as if I had renewed. I didn't even have their equipment anymore.
another 45 minutes on the phone and they say it is finally cancelled. But who knows. I'll probably have to call again when they take the amount from my bank account despite removing my bank info from their site.
A company with 19.2M users. Imagine how many people are robbed "by mistake." This is not a mistake but part of their internal procedures.
Cancelling a service even when contract is over is made difficult on purpose.
In a word. Lobbyists.
There's a lot of replies here about why US citizens are in the situation they are but not how to fix it, which was the question you asked. You have two political parties in a first past the post system with largely similar corporate focussed policies, people primarily vote against a party rather than for one that represents them. If you really want to change things you'll need to overhaul your voting system to break up your two party system and encourage competition from parties that actually represent what people want.
Unfortunately there is no safe and easy way to do this; it means the two parties in power giving up that power which they will not do willingly. You'll need large scale consistent and actually disruptive protests, ie not just meeting up for a day then returning to life as nornal, but the US has a history of responding to protests the same way they do everything; with violence.
So more practically, you can contact your representative at the appropriate level of government and hope they don't completely ignore you this time.
One of the things more and more companies are doing is
Ignoring the Laws.
They have learned to ignore what they are required to do or what they are allowed to do . Knowing few will sue and those who win will get no more than they were due.
The companies have learned there is no downside for being criminal.... So they have become criminals.
The US is incredibly bad at reining in capitalism. It also only has two parties that are both heavily influenced by lobbyists.
To fix it, not sure, calling politicians and showing up to stuff will help but it's always going to be an uphill battle. Anyway, just vote, if you get the option to choose then vote for a third party as long as you're not in a swing state.
The real solution is still voting reform to get more diverse opinion so if that's on the ballot vote for it and try to get other people to do the same. The UK missed a major opportunity for voter reform.
This can happen over a couple of generations by removing winner take all representatives for a state and cause a hung parliament. Coalition talks will then be more likely to include concessions on the two state systems to get a governing coalition.
You can look at the UK as being the same only one generation ahead if things go well.
I swear shit has gotten exponentially worse since I was young. For example, last year I suffered a brain injury, I have about a month of missing memory. During that month, my homeowners association sent notice that they were being sold to another management company and the autopay I'd been using for 5 years would be cancelled. I missed this notice due to being in the hospital with brain damage and so never got new payment switched over.
I'm used to companies being gracious and working with their customers. Instead I had a lawyer sicked on me and the paperwork to forclose my house was started. I wound up having to pay all their legal fees and penalties which was an order of magnitude more than the actuall missed payments.
This was the most painful one recently but this is par for the course. Someone else said it in this thread but it's become a real dog eat dog world, something that used to be a folksy saying has now become a harsh reality.
Capitalism. The answer for most societal problems we face.
Why would regular people need protection? They don't have shareholders! 🤷🏻♂️
Why do ordinary people seem so unprotected against these shady practices
Assuming you are in the USA, it's fundamentally because our politics is fueled by private money. The "haves" spend lots of money to make rules that protect and enrich themselves at the expense of the "have nots". The rich get richer, and the rest of us get a larger share of the burden.
The rich then spend more of their money convincing everyone else that some minority group of their fellow "have nots" are to blame and let us fight amongst ourselves. They starve us but leave us with just enough left to lose so that the price of doing something about it is too high (quitting, losing health insurance, getting arrested at a protest, etc) for most of us to bear.
how can we change this?
Get money out of politics. Get the public to stop blaming their fellow have nots and demand change from the haves.
How does one person even start to address these issues?
Have empathy for and help your neighbors if you can, especially when they take the risks required to push for actual change. Talk to people. Organize. Support/start unions or a mutual aid organization. Go to local government meetings and make your voice heard. Run for local office.
Its easy for a small group of wealthy organizations to tilt specific elections or politics in their favor. It's much harder them to do that in 1,000+ small communities across the nation.
because private companies were never meant to big this big and powerful.
They have so much power because they lobby and control the government, part of the problem is dems being generally unappealing and trying to focus more on less significant social issues rather than doing things like, taking away the rights that big corpos never should've had in the first place.
It's a give and take game, the less regulations you have, the more companies you have and the more capital you have moving through you, the more you have the less regulations you have and the less capital you have moving through you.
Did you think about it until it happened to you? There's a huge lack of empathy and thought in general (I would argue that, as communities, this increased as social media became more prevalent and in-person third places shrank). Even then, if there is a concerned group, they still have to fight all those other people who are not concerned because they don't think it will affect them or are possibly mildly inconvenienced by it. I think addressing that would help. Also, writing to your elected officials and voting in all elections.
Start organized movements to heavily push for ranked choice voting. If it becomes a national movement then maybe we'll first start seeing it locally, then on a larger scale.
$1000 is likely small claims court. At least where I was, no lawyers are allowed for small claims so the landlord would have to come to deal with it himself or a representative of the payment company.
Well one big fix would be to make legal services free at point of services and instead make the government responsible for paying the salaries of lawyers.
Call it Justice for All like Medicare for All but more patriotic sounding and litigious.
Kills SLAP suits, and opens the gates for people who had legitimate grievances but were scared of the legal fees and costs to have access to their day in court.
It's because the American culture of individualism has successfully divided up worker's power that makes standing against wealthy and powerful individuals next to impossible.
I will say this because people in the US don't seem to look out for neighbours that they can't see.
Vote for politicians who will empower the working class and take billionaires and multinational corps down a notch. Don't let culture war distractions take people's eyes off the ruling class intentionally diverting the attention away from them.
Team up with your neighbours... you don't have to start a protest/riot immediately but ask them if they've had a similar issue with the landlord's autopay system. Have barbecues or potluck dinners with them on occasion.
Go to your local city council when an issue you care about comes up. Write to your city council, state rep, house rep and senators about things that concern you. Join local movements or participate in their events to enact change you want to see. United you will be stronger.
OP I don't know what state you're in but in some states like CA a landlord can't pull shit like this
in California, a landlord cannot compel a tenant to pay rent via electronic transfer. The landlord must provide an alternate means by which the tenant can make payment. See California Civil Code Section 1947.3(a)(1)).
There’s been deliberate dismantling of social services.
I was married to a wealthy man. He was controlling and abusive, and had the police remove me from our home. It wasn’t legal, but the police have lost the records of whatever they did that night. I couldn’t get a lawyer to help me, he had access to my bank accounts and emptied them. I reached out to multiple domestic violence agencies - there is no shelter, there are no lawyers, there are maybe one or two therapists if you are lucky. But I’m basically completely helpless.
Open revolution is about the only avenue left.
Businesses have more money than individual citizens. You will get what you want from the U.S. government and local government when we get money out of politics -Full-stop.
it's because money equals power and they have all the money and are able to build mechanisms to suck the money you have so that they have even more money. Can't help with the landlord but for the pest control using something like virtual credit cards numbers. so if they won't let you cancel. you just delete that card and they lose acess to your payment details. when they contact you for payment just cancel right then.
Reactionary and minimal lawmaking. A cultural thing since wild west times, because of freedom-mindset. Lead to more and more influence of financial strong parties, lead to laws supporting said parties.
I'm not an expert in any of those areas and from europe, but that's how i understand the USA.
Pretty much we are a corporate welfare state at this point. Electing officials you think will pass or enforce laws to bring them to heel is your best bet. (People like AOC are preferred, as she has never accepted contributions from corporations to her campaign.)
You need to read the terms of the agreement
If you are in the right, don't pay and let them sue you. Go to the judge and explain the situation.
This is how you handle if you are confident you are right.
If you are not confident, then tuck your dick and pay daddy what he said.
There is nothing in-between.
Not that I would recommend this, but I feel like the shittiness of business correlates in inversely with the public's opinion on molotov cocktails.
If your fucking business burns down weekly because you keep fucking people over, you're not going to stay in business very long.
I just started listening to a new podcast series called Master Plan that talks about how this happened deliberately and systematically over decades. It followed the Powell Doctrine. You can hear a conversation between the primary host, David Sirota, and Brianna Joy Gray (she's not one of my favorites, but I tuned in because it was him) on Bad Faith podcast.
Corporations tried out binding arbitration and the people just took it with very little complaining. So why not keep eroding consumer protections or the other rights citizens fought for in the before times?
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Contact local counsel. There's probably an attorney who practices in rental law near you that does free consultations.
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It's not that we don't have protections it's that we have an access to justice issue.
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The entire justice system rests on how much money you have.
It's capitalism, capitalism is the core of the problem.
It treats people who have wealth as good people who always have a chance to appeal injustice and people without wealth as never having an opportunity to fight injustice.
You would literally need to tear it all down and start over because the US Consitution is kind of a piece of garbage and we spend way too much time jerking off the old dead white slave-owners who wrote down that "All men are created equal... as long as they're white and own land."
In some more civilized countries, they do things like peg criminal fines to the wealth of the person who committed the crime? Poor person? Small fine. Rich person? Huge fine. It's decided based on a percentage of their wealth. So the wealthier criminals literally pay more because of their financial influence.
Because non-ordinary people make the rules.
I am not a lawyer, but consumer protections should generally kick in when an issue is actually evaluated in a court. If you are being charged for things you believe to be unfair, you would need to refuse to pay, then see them in action after the business escalates it. Often, a predatory business will give up when it knows it doesn't have a case. But it's pretty hard to work on behalf of a citizen if they ultimately are convinced that they do have an obligation to pay after all.
I agree with the other commenter on the first issue. If you have been paying the amount you were charged, and then hit with surprise retroactive charges, you would have a serious case in small claims. I expect a judge would favor you if it's as described. $1000 for late fees is exorbitant, especially when the glitch was from their software and not rectified quickly. Unless you're leaving out relevant details that explains the situation better.
For the second issue, needlessly cumbersome cancellation processes are considered dark patterns and may be illegal in some cases. These cases are being enforced more recently, even against large companies like Amazon. For your pest control case though, if you face pushback when cancelling it's pretty simple to tell them you won't be using their services and will refuse to pay. If you already paid, you may be able to issue a chargeback after explaining the situation to your bank. Seeing as how you would be being charged for services not done, I don't see how the business could contest that after being informed of the cancellation. You would still be on the hook for a (reasonable) cancellation fee, as lost business from a cancelled reservation does represent real damages.
We are a country with a litigious history and we have recognized considerable rights for consumers. Just because you feel powerless doesn't mean you are.
It sounds like you need a tenants union.
Local organization is a great option. Not everything needs the federal government to come in and smack people.
We surely can do both, but you personally can start a tenants Union today.
I'd argue it's because citizens have no voice. The media has there corporate narrative, but the public interest has very few organizations in advocacy of it.
Support local journalism (financially), work to break any media control on the narrative.
The first thing people could start doing is stop providing free labor to the media. It's all over Lemmy.
Don't link to a corporate news outlet. Link to an .edu or PBS or NPR or a quality international publicly funded news organization. Or better yet build your own narrative, your own opinions. Discuss your opinions respectfully on !politicaldiscussion@lemmy.world . Build momentum and take away the corporate medias control.
Without a public voice advocating for the people, it will be very hard to change any legislation in the peoples favor.
Join a radical militia or leave.
It's just corporations and rich assholes running the show and they absolutely do not give a fuck about anyone but themselves, especially if the anyone is
poorordinary. The only way to solve the issue is to completely remove these entities from the equation and start making our own protections.a glitch that excluded my pet rent and water bill. I ended up with over $1,000 in late fees. Despite hours on the phone, it turns out their system doesn’t really do auto-pay and requires a fixed amount instead of covering the full rent
You got over $1000 in late fees from a single month of not having the full amount?
Have you seen the !politicaldiscussion@lemmy.world community? This would be a good post there as well, I think!
There are laws against excessive fees like this. In my home state of Florida, a landlord cannot charge more than 20% the rent in late fees.
And trust me, Florida is not known for its consumer protections. So chances are your state has a similar law which is probably better.
So if I were you I would look up the law and not pay.
Assuming of course you are telling the full truth- your full rent payment was late for a short period of time.
The unfortunate fact is it is a dog eat dog world, and corporations can and will fuck you over. Maintain a budget, maintain an emergency fund of $10k or 6 months living expenses (whichever is bigger) and be prepared to be screwed over so that when it does happen you don't find yourself up the proverbial creek without a paddle.
On top of this, as an additional safety net, build a friend group and build a culture within your friend group of helping each other. One friend getting a surgery? Offer to cook for them, or bring them some precooked meals. A friend stuck on the side of the road, offer to come help, even if it's just as emotional support.
I started this process a few months ago so I'm in a better position now that my work has announced that they're relocating across the country and basically everyone is losing their jobs over the next 3-9 months. It would've been more convenient if this happened a year later, but it is what it is so now I have to shape my next steps and move forwards
Blood
Personally I'd recommend focusing your time and energy on the things you can control. As an individual, there is nothing you can do alone about it. If you feel strongly enough about it you could join or start an advocacy organization about the part of the problem you find most galling. But the truth is unless enough people both want change and are motivated to take action to get it the world will continue its decline unchecked.
Volunteer if you can, but try not to let it get to you. The impersonal brutality of our world sucks butts. Some horny french guy would tell you that life is absurd. If everyone agreed we shouldn't burn fossil fuels, we wouldn't. But we can't ever all agree about anything. Most landlords aren't malicious, they just don't understand how their greed affects others and don't care enough to try. The horny french guy's drinking buddy and metamore would say you can only laugh at the absurdity of existing at all. If you look hard enough the entire universe seems in on how fucked we all. Do what you can, but find something else that makes it bother you less (like a hobby, not a meth habit). I like writing weird stuff and being the model maliciously compliant tenant.
You totally have a move with the landlord. Follow the rules of your lease chapter and verse. I bet there is a specific clause in there about you being responsible for any unreported maintenance issues. And there is also a clause saying something about the landlord's responsibility to perform maintenance. There is usually some wiggle room, but there is probably like a two week window in which the landlord is required to fix any issues with their building.
Report everything. Get on a first name basis with the maintenance folks and whoever answers the phone for your landlord. I had a roach problem because my next door neighbor was a hoarder and left my landlord voicemails every night updating them on all the new locations I have found roaches and my efforts to eradicate them myself. Once the roaches were dealt with my landlord was very willing to overlook those maintenance fees because it's cheaper than court.
Edit: and was probably grateful not to deal with that tenant.