No Stupid Questions

To make major, sustained, positive change would require widespread violent revolution.

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.

You have basically two options.

1. vote for Democrats, and make sure your Democrat representatives know that you care a lot about consumer protections

2. make a shit ton of money so you can fight these companies on more even footing

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.

Sorry I'm not american, but what is Pet Rent? never heard of that

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.

revolution i hear you say?

Because non-ordinary people make the rules.

1. Contact local counsel. There's probably an attorney who practices in rental law near you that does free consultations.

2. It's not that we don't have protections it's that we have an access to justice issue.

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?

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 [email protected] . 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.

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.

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?

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 ~~poor~~ ordinary. The only way to solve the issue is to completely remove these entities from the equation and start making our own protections.

We're peasants and there's nothing we can do about it.