Everyone should have seen them, although I seldom actually read mine: terms of service (ToS). These are the contracts companies force on you if you want to buy their service/product. Often they contain egregious terms that are totally in favor of the company and totally against you.
For example, mandatory binding arbitration, which you may have heard about (e.g. here and here). Or, Facebook's attempt earlier this year to give themselves, basically, the right to own what you post. (Story.)
And even without ToS, companies often have policies that are constructed to work against you, like how banks give themselves the leeway to clear your checks from biggest to smallest, or clear debits before credits, thereby increasing the chances and number of overdrafts you might face.
Here's what we need: a Terms of Patronage that companies must agree to in order to do business with us. Of course, if you or I alone walk up to Verizon and say, "these are my terms", they'll tell you to get lost. So we need a form of consumer co-op or union to give ourselves collective bargaining strength. I see no good way to create one of these, but I figured I'd mention it in hopes it might trigger a good idea in someone else's head.
On a related note, retail co-operatives have been common for a long time (wikipedia). There's surely a lot to be learned from how they are created and run. Examples: everyone's probably heard of credit unions; around here we have a food co-op; and the outdoor equipment retailer REI is a co-op.
The main questions for me are:
For example, mandatory binding arbitration, which you may have heard about (e.g. here and here). Or, Facebook's attempt earlier this year to give themselves, basically, the right to own what you post. (Story.)
And even without ToS, companies often have policies that are constructed to work against you, like how banks give themselves the leeway to clear your checks from biggest to smallest, or clear debits before credits, thereby increasing the chances and number of overdrafts you might face.
Here's what we need: a Terms of Patronage that companies must agree to in order to do business with us. Of course, if you or I alone walk up to Verizon and say, "these are my terms", they'll tell you to get lost. So we need a form of consumer co-op or union to give ourselves collective bargaining strength. I see no good way to create one of these, but I figured I'd mention it in hopes it might trigger a good idea in someone else's head.
On a related note, retail co-operatives have been common for a long time (wikipedia). There's surely a lot to be learned from how they are created and run. Examples: everyone's probably heard of credit unions; around here we have a food co-op; and the outdoor equipment retailer REI is a co-op.
The main questions for me are:
- A consumers' union is only effective when it gets large, so how do you get to be large?
- Can you do this without having to actually establish a retail cooperative directly? That is, can we just use the leverage of the union to bargain for better/fairer terms from companies we already want to do business with?
- Are there organizations already well-positioned to do this? Or already doing it even? (I just discovered the National Associate of Consumer Advocates, which certainly has a right-souding name.)
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