Business as Usual...

[Dimocritus]

The customer is always right. Well, at least he fucking used to be. Now that there's no competition for (or time or energy to compete with, even) massive retailers, you can go ahead and throw that old adage right out the window. S'true. Hell, they got rid of that one a while ago for "you break it, you buy it."

Unfortunately, the newest business motto is even worse. They won't say it to your face, mind you, but they sure as fuck giggle it to themselves every time you drop a dollar. Yep, the new unspoken motto: "we broke it, you bought it. So F U." Whatever in fuck's name ever happened to customer service?

Haha! Laughing yet? I am (teeth means laughing, right?). Customer service. Yeah, right. So, that thing you just bought with your hard earned cash (you know, that stuff you worked OT at three jobs for just so you could make the bills back off a bit, and, maybe, hopefully, have something leftover for, y'know, recreation time? Yeah, that stuff) discovered its 30 day warranty was up and shit the bed. So, you call good ol' customer service.

And they'll tell you it's your fault.

That's right. The people that are supposed to be servicing you, the customer, are militantly defending the company's bottom line, probably because they were browbeaten by new "policy" till their heads were all swimmy. It's not there fault, though. In this economy, sometimes you have to put your own personal ideals (not to mention your pride, dignity and self respect) on the back burner for a bit just to stay employed. No, it's not their fault. It's your fault.

Now, why is this? It's because these huge corporations are better than you. More rights means better, right? This is Americur, after all... Hell, they have the right to take out tax-free life insurance policies on the 90 year old Alzheimer's patient that they make work all day without a break until He's ready to croak, which should be any day now, by my calculations, and have the nerve to call it "dead peasants" insurance (which accounts for roughly 20% of Insurance companies yearly income), as if having wine and cheese while his family struggles to make up the lost income isn't insulting enough. How about investing that money on, I dunno, better health insurance. Or at least, maybe, a friggin' lunch break.

Frig, we're not even customers. We're not even consumers anymore. Not even people. We're "human resources," like a sausage person being harvested for parts. We die, some jackass VP goes on vacation. But that's your fault, right?

It's your fault that no one regulates these guys anyway. But, shit, why would we want regulation, think about the free market! Think about capitalism! Think about 4.9 million barrels of oil in your back yard!

Sure, we can make a patsy out of one or two companies that make major boners to keep the illusion of regulation, but it's nothing a multi-million dollar PR campaign and a yacht ride can't fix (What's that? You don't have a yacht? Haha! What a plebian!). Even if they got hit hard, they'll be back with a new business motto, a new name and a bigger bottom line. But fuck, that's your fault, so they say.

Whatever.

We're all getting shit on, but sometimes I feel like one of the only ones that can smell it.

Fuck it.

What the fuck do I know, anyway.

[Freeky]

[Don Coyote]

I concur. Especially since anything I ever get that can break and is beyond my skills, ie anything that I can't fix with a hammer, will wait until after the warranty is up, or the extended warranty.

also

[Lies]

So what broke of yours?

[Cuddlefish]

Fuck. I don't know what I was thinking posting this in fucking Apple Talk where it's just gonna get burried by a million retarded troll threads (not to mention terribly boring retarded troll threads).

Any mods maybe want to move this to OKM for me?

[Sir Squid Diddimus]

I FUCKING READ IT

and i never read shit.

these days shit is made to break when the warrantee expires to make you buy a new one.
fixing it is beyond your skills or impossible to make you buy a new one.
they don't want to replace or repair things because they want you to buy a new one.
they make things disposable so you will just throw it away and buy a new one.

be a good consumer and just buy a new one.

lather
rinse
puke

[Prince Glittersnatch III]

We're all getting shit on, but sometimes I feel like one of the only ones that can smell it.

Brb putting that on a T-shirt.

[Triple Zero]

Fuck. I don't know what I was thinking posting this in fucking Apple Talk where it's just gonna get burried by a million retarded troll threads (not to mention terribly boring retarded troll threads).

Any mods maybe want to move this to OKM for me?

Sure np, Moved.

So, what's the law say about this in the US? I mean, what does it exactly say?

You need to know this sort of thing for your rights as a consumer. Heh reminds me of when I watched Falling Down (required watching, this movie) and Michael Douglas said "I'm a consumer! I have rights!" and I LOLed. Out Loud.

Over here (in the Netherlands) it starts with the legal notion of a "sale". Means you exchange an agreed upon amount of money for an agreed upon good.

The "agreed upon" is key here. If you buy a vacuum cleaner, you get home, it doesn't work, you will get your money back. Because the sale was invalid, because the good turned out not to be what was agreed upon.

Funny detail, they can require you to provide a proof of sale. The receipt. But legally, any proof of sale works, so if you lost the receipt you can use a bank statement, or anything that reasonably proves you bought the good at that store. The store will often try to reject anything that is not a receipt, but if you bitch about it you are in your right. The store clerks usually don't know this either, or if they do, it's a lot easier to process a return of a good from a receipt than from some bank statement.

For a reasonable price, you are allowed to expect it will last for a certain amount of years. Anything beyond this is your warranty. But the reasonable expectation is part of the sale. For certain kinds of hardware these times are set by law (or some official ruling something), I think it's one or two years for a vacuum cleaner. But at least five for a washing machine.

But you can always ask. And if someone says 30 days, then you can tell him you will pay the price for a vacuum cleaner that lasts 30 days.