You know the world according to Adam Smith, wherein the invisible hand of the unencumbered market creates a paradise here on earth. Was there ever anything to it? A recent news article details how, according to a lawsuit filed by Minnesota attorney general Lori Swanson, the Discover Card company signs customers up for expensive and unwanted products, such as identity theft protection and credit score monitoring:
The suit alleges that Discover's telemarketers lulled cardholders into thinking they were getting a "courtesy call," then read a sales script so quickly -- often running sentences together and skipping over key words -- that many cardholders reflexively said, "Yes," or, "OK." Discover treated these responses as agreements to sign up for a new product, even when there was no clear consent and the customer did not understand the terms, the lawsuit alleges.
This business practice reminds me of my first cell phone contract. It was for two years, with Sprint. While the contract was running, my work made a BlackBerry available to me, so I was eager to ditch the phone that I hardly ever used anyway. On the 731st day I made the call, and was told that I would be assessed a $200 "early termination fee." Turns out I had at one point decided to save a few bucks by changing my text messaging plan--I rarely used the phone but I never texted--and, the Sprint representative explained, in the voice of Hal from 2001, I had at this time consented to a new two-year contract, which began to run on that day. Now I was terminating well before the "new" contract was up.
It 's ridiculous that making a minor change to a billing option would result in a new contract. But the other point, relating to the case against Discover, is that I never would have made the change had it been made clear to me that I was signing up for another two years.
In the wonderful world of Adam Smith, there are willing sellers and willing buyers. Now we have companies that sell people things without their consent. It's like they had the idea: Why advertise? You can try to persuade people to buy things they don't need, but it is more efficient just to send them a bill for it.
The private sector is a mostly seamless advertisement for big government. You go, Lori Swanson!
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