I know Congress is always in the news, but when you think about it, it’s usually when an issue arises, whether real or imagined, which is then aired, discussed, slanted, debated, opined on etc., ad nauseum, until the next opportunity for face/airtime comes around and the whole cycle starts again.
I’d have to say “thankfully”, unless you’re a C-SPAN junkie, we are not exposed to the less interesting goings on in that bastion of democracy we call Capitol Hill (which is a metonym, I’ve just discovered!). Even when there has been one of these “super” votes, and I have observed the proceedings, it seems intensely boring with people all standing around looking like they’re looking for something to do other than cut taxes for the rich or ensure constituency pork barrels are buried in totally unrelated legislation.
Which brings to mind the fact that the term “pork barrel”, as used in the political sense, is one we don’t hear very often anymore. Which probably means that it is now an accepted practice and we all end up paying for things like the infamous “Bridge to Nowhere” in Alaska. That, I find, is quite disturbing.
I Digress.
But, in an effort to have our elected officials actually earn what we, (the mainly middle-class citizens of America), pay them to do, here are a couple of suggestions.
The world is constantly changing in many ways. As I pointed out above, the term “pork barrel politics” seems to have faded from use – it certainly has lost some of the negative tones associated with it just a few short years ago. Morals & ethics? I can’t decide if they are evolving or dissolving, but they certainly change. Laws change, and business practices also change, whether it’s the old-fashioned slug fest in the market or a blue ocean strategy that completely redefines products, product delivery, usage, marketing, pricing etc. Often these changes come against an aging system of protections for the consumer that are cruelly exposed as being insufficient with the passage of time, so the first thing that Congress can start work on for all Americans – regardless of race, ethnicity, sexual orientation, age or whatever – is a Consumer Bill of Rights.
And in this Consumer Bill of Rights (or CBR as this lazy typist will refer to it as) we will be addressing several our societal ills.
For example, we have an obesity problem in the US. Ease up there on the “No, duh”! stuff – that statement is but a mere steppingstone to a main point! Which is: it is exceedingly difficult to determine one’s caloric intake on any particular day due to the way foods are currently labelled. I mean you’d want to have some kind of chip installed in your head to be able to do all the comparisons/computations you need to figure out exactly how much, or how many, of what is actually in this food!
The labels are all over the place. Often you can’t even compare different brands of the same thing because they label them differently! And how insane would you drive yourself if you were trying to monitor your intake of, say, chips? Look at the labelling on a bag of chips and they’ll give you all the stats for a “serving size” – which is unhelpfully described as “about 15 chips”.
And they say “about” because their lawyers have told them to. You see, the legal eagles looked inside a bag of chips and said “hmm, they don’t seem to be uniform in shape, can we agree on the fact that they are all different shapes and sizes?”
So how do we measure “about 15 chips”? Do we go with a big one as being our base chip and then massively overcompensate on the number of smaller chips that aggregate to “about 15 chips”? Or do we show discipline and use a smaller fragment as our base chip, thus extending the shelf life of our purchase to the point of staleness?
How do you tell which loaf of bread has the lower calorie count per slice when, despite being displayed on the packaging, there’s a clear differential in size?
And why measure serving sizes in such units as grams or mls? Right or wrong, the US is still very much a cup and fluid ounce nation, rather than their respective metric equivalents, so why complicate things?
We could seriously put the onus on ourselves to be more aware of our caloric intake by simplifying the whole labelling nonsense, thus improving our health, which in return would help reduce our expenses and allow for a better standard of living.
No more packages containing “about 2.5 servings”. I mean, what nonsense is that? It’s nothing more than an invitation to either overeat or waste food!
So, what we need in our CBR is the adoption of a uniform food labelling code. It’ll be quite simple. The categories will be produce, meat, beverages and other foods. Everything must fit into those categories, because that’s the way we shop and the labelling for each category will be the same. For example, there’ll be a base optimal serving size for, say, produce and that will be ounces, so we can compare whether 3 ounces of cauliflower has more, or less, calories than the same amount of cabbage. Beverages will be measured in fluid ounces, meat (including deli meats) by weight also, canned or boxed items by the cup measurement and bread by the slice and so on. You know, simplify things. Even the playing field between Jane or Joe Public and the corporations.
Another provision of the CBR will be to eliminate and ban all small print in advertising. It’s patently insane, using our “reasonable person” doctrine, to think that any greater number than perhaps .05% of the population actually reads that minute font! Who freezes their tv screen during a commercial for, well, anything really? They don’t. (Except me, obviously, or I’d have nothing to write about here!) And if any of that stuff was really important, why isn’t the advertiser upfront and make it more apparent? And is it necessary? I mean, do we really need an ad that shows 2 astronauts in a moon buggy going over some hostile looking terrain to carry the printed admonition of “Do Not Attempt”!!??
We’re all familiar with Apple, Google (Alphabet), Amazon, Facebook et al and their “service agreements”. Pages and pages of legalese small print that nobody reads, right? I mean, who reads the tome that accompanies each iPhone software update? Why is it necessary? What are they trying to hide? Make it a simple, one page, document with a standard font.
And when we are misled by various advertising claims, it needs to be far easier to prove false advertising. And I’m talking both commercial advertising and politics. No more auto dealers offering “low mileage leases”, making it sound like it’s something that you’d want, as opposed to a “high mileage” lease!
When you start hitting them in the pocket, they’ll start to change their attitude towards the consumer/voter. No more lies allowed in political ads. Let the people decide who should govern based on facts not fiction. Maybe if we did, we would have avoided the current mess we find ourselves in?
I’m tempted to “drop” another “doctrine” on this point, but here’s another thing we need: End Seller Responsibility.
Take, for example, a smart phone. So, we have the manufacturer of the equipment, the mobile phone carrier, the app maker(s)s and (a lot of time now, I guess, with working from home, much more prevalent) the provider of internet service.
And when something goes wrong, when the old “turn it off, then turn it back on again” solution doesn’t work, you need help, but from who? The mobile phone carrier will blame the phone maker, who will blame the app maker, who will blame the mobile phone carrier who now blames your internet provider who blames the phone maker who………, well, you get the idea.
And we’re the ones who have to spend the time chasing down all the players! And even then, you might not get your problem solved!
There are lots of products/services that are bundled together that have become essential to our everyday lives and with all the demands on our time, we should NOT have to waste it going from Billy to Jack (or Edwina to Jane if you prefer) trying to solve problems!
End Seller Responsibility says that whomever ends up selling the product/device/service to the user, is responsible for what goes wrong and has to co-ordinate with the other companies that have bundled their stuff together to figure out a solution. Just keep it simple!
If this is truly a consumer driven society, how come the actual consumer have so little voice? And, in a sense, I mean that literally. Because there’s one more thing that needs to go into our CBR. And that’s a section dealing with anything that is termed as “customer service”.
How much time do we spend on the phone, just waiting for our “call that is so important to them” to be answered? And then, after getting someone live to talk to and going through your whole story, they transfer you to another department – even though your question relates to “billing” and you selected the correct option from the automated menu? And then, maybe getting transferred to yet another person who can’t give you their first and last name and doesn’t have an available supervisor for you to speak to, and nowadays has the audacity to blame Covid-19 on service delays?
There are only two reasons, in my opinion, why customers must hang on the phones for near lifetimes. One is that the customer service is truly overrun because the company supplies shit products, and many customers are calling to complain. Obviously, this is a short-term problem. Either the company fixes their problems or they’re out of business.
The other reason, the more insidious one from my point of view, is that companies just flat undersize their customer service departments and get away with it by flaunting awards given by the foxes guarding the hen houses! And any company that, at this stage, uses “Covid-19” as an excuse for poor customer service, needs to get a grip with itself. You’ve had the best part of a year to figure it out.
Now, I don’t know who this JD Power guy is. You know, the one who hands out various “awards” to generous “sponsors” of their “independent, objective” measurement system. I honestly don’t know who knows who they award, or for what!
Take, for example, Verizon. They trumpeted in 2020 that JD Power declared Verizon as the “Most Awarded Wireless Company for Network Quality for the 25th consecutive year” as per globalnewswire.com. Now just look at that award itself for the minute. The awards title clearly infers that there are many “awards” for wireless companies for network quality on an annual basis. What are they and who gives them? Who can tell who is better? Is Verizon better than T-Mobile or AT&T? I’’ bet customers of all mobile providers experience dropped calls, service outages, lost voice mails etc., etc.
The same JD also consistently awards Verizon with customer service awards too. How? You can’t contact them by email or letter. You have to spend the time on the phone, waiting for them to get to you eventually and then, unless they can sell you something, they invariably can’t help.
We need customer service “gold standards”. Customers should not have to wait more than, say, ten minutes waiting to speak to a human. A supervisor must be always available to speak with a dissatisfied customer. For those customers who can’t/don’t want to use a phone, and email contact point must be available. There has to be a time limit on email responses too.
All customer service stats are to be published so consumers can evaluate, without the bull&*^%, the best choice for themselves.
If corporations complain about the costs of all this, their answer is simple. Make better products, be more transparent in your dealings with your customer base. They can offset some of the costs of this by diverting the “contributions” they make towards the various “rating” bodies.
Compliance, I hear you say! And again, let’s keep it plain and simple, and hit ‘em where it hurts – in the pocket. Failure to meet the applicable standards will be met by a fine that will be a percentage of the company’s revenue.
So now, readers, we have charged our elected officials with enacting legislation that protects the individual against the corporation and balances the playing field between corporate resources and the social classes that do not qualify to be described as “elite”. We have empowered the people to make better decisions on their health, thereby increasing their quality of life. We have stopped those corporations from sneaking by us, in small print, critical information, and limit their opportunities to mislead us and cause us to make detrimental decisions. And we have created opportunities for greater productivity by limiting the time spent seeking customer satisfaction, and for consumers to make purchasing decisions based on transparent and readily available information.
Now that would be a great start.