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| People Who Earn By Scandal. |
People Who Earn By Scandal
Probably, each of us have at least once faced violation of our consumer rights: found a hair in soup or got disappointed in vacation tour or disclosed a scratch on the side panel of the car. Somebody will take it calmly, even philosophically; others will try to protect their consumer rights.
The World Consumer Day was first celebrated on March 15, 1962 after John Kennedy has proclaimed four main rights of the consumer: the right to safety, to an opportunity of a choice, right to know exhaustive information, to support from authorities. In the Soviet Union the First Consumer Union was established in 1988. Russians, in general, came to understanding of their rights in the 90s, when democrats came to power.
We yet don’t have the culture of consumer claims whereas in America fighting for ones consumer rights has become almost a national sport. Moreover, for some people it’s become means of earning money. The main characters of the film Rat Race meet by chance in casino; two of them plan to “fall” from the staircase for cleaners “forgot” a wineglass on top of the stairs. Young men are sure that if they fall due to the casino’s fault, they will get some money as compensation for moral and physical damage. While they are arguing who is to fall, a lady passing by slips and goes head over hills to the bottom stairs. In a moment she is surrounded by dozens of people pitying her, an advocate steps put of the crowd and claims to sue the casino for “criminal negligence”. The young men who wanted to fall deliberately are left empty-handed.
But the fact that the crowd and the lawyer where on the customer’s side, irrespective of the hotel being un-guilty, speaks for itself. Those who take consumer scandals as source of money have their own strategy and understand the risks they undertake; one of dangerous ways to receive compensation is to get into an accident and “damage health”.
Brilliant Russian novelist Arkadiy Averchenko started one of his satirical stories picturing a man who deliberately fell in front of a horse in the street and claimed afterwards that he suffered from the coachman being absent-minded. He happened to choose a horse of a rich art patron, who was so shocked that he invited the victim to his house for a cup of tea.
The life of the so called victim was well-provided and carefree ever since. I read one that a man who has got into an accident, broke his neck and remained invalid for the rest of his life, sued Chrysler for 150 million dollars; he proved that his health was ruined because of low-quality door locks. The court didn’t take into account that the broken locks were a result of the accident and that there customer drove in a condition of narcotic intoxication. Certainly, it was a hard job to win this case; the lawyers chose the state and laws that would satisfy the claim for sure.
The majority of Americans knows that if the car on road receives even the weakest impact behind, it is essential to get out of the car keeping a hand on the nape. At successful coincidence of circumstances may result in getting compensation (for dislocation of vertebra treatment) from the guy who has bumped you. Well, not everyone is good in anatomy: one lady, having bumped a car in front of her, got out holding the nape.
Tourism is one of the industries where there are many claims from customers, and half of these claims are purposely provoked to get compensation. It is a usual procedure to send the managers to the informational travel tour so that the agency knows at first hand everything about the places they offer to the customers; so all tours offered to the client are tested and sure to satisfy the most faultfinding demands. Besides, usually they are at least two or three different customers leave for the same tour at the same time, so there’s a possibility to compare the impressions and claims. But in any tour there’s a person willing to sue the tourist agency. There’s a category of professional tourists, or professional customers who travel around the world with one aim only – to provoke consumer scandals.
Some cases are ridiculous; one lady, for example, carried along cockroaches in a can and let them out in luxurious hotels. She was paid quite a sum as compensation in several hotels before her strategy was disclosed. It’s not a single case; there’s a whole site on the Internet with black-lists of such customers, but it takes time to accumulate extensive statistics.
Some companies are not afraid of provocative customers; moreover, they try to use the situation to get advertised. Remember the old woman who has sued "McDonalds" for 3 million dollars. Ridiculous as it might seem, she claimed that her coffee was too hot and that damaged her health. She received a huge amount of money, but McDonalds brand costs billions dollars. So having paid these 3 million to the granny, the company won a lot of new customers. It also often happens that the consumer doesn’t get expected goods or service and cannot prove that his rights were damaged.
For example, the shoes fall to pieces in a month after they were bought, or sealed in the fridge turns sour - such things happen if the goods are cheap or are bought in an untrustworthy place. In this case the customer should be ready to blame himself only for greediness.
Sometimes goods don’t coincide with announced characteristics (a filter on the car should be replaced too often); that may happen due to customer’s neglecting of manufacturer’s instructions (the fuel used is inadequate to the engine); in this case it is manufacturer who should be protected.. It is difficult to say, who nowadays has more rights – customers or manufacturers, there are swindlers and conscientious people among both; but it is necessary to provide reasonable balance of protection of honest market participants. |
| Average rating: 2 | Add 28 Feb 06 Ludmila |
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| Comments |
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| itryharder |
Yes, but -- most people aren't just out to take advantage of a situation. If they were, the whole system would fall apart, for a very large number of people have suffered a potentially "debilitating" injury that could help them suck the system dry.
The critical thing right now is tort reform. If you remove the outsized reward for the lawsuit, you remove the reason most people have for them. In Britain, those who lose lawsuits pay the other side's legal fees as well as their own. Why can't we do that in America?
Or perhaps punitive damages can be put in a trust fund run by nonprofit agencies (similar to the ACLU) dedicated to treating and preventing whatever the cause at fault was? |
| Amy |
How do people like this get away with it? Do the managers just look the other way? Or what's going on? I mean, how can you not know people are doing bad things?
Take the lady who found a finger in her soup at Wendy's. Brings up thoughts of all kinds of stupid jokes. But how obvious could it have been that the finger was planted? It wasn't cooked; if the finger had been in with the rest of the soup in the mix, it would have been cooked. Instead, it was pretty much intact.
You'd think a manager could just look at it and call the cops. But no. They cater to her, the news gets hold of it, and Wendys loses millions of dollars because no one's brave enough to go eat the chili there.
I think the world's just crazy. |
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