The Consumerist Manifesto

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My name is Charles Selden. I write this blog for consumers who have been abused by corporations. Like you.

Me?…abused?

That’s right. Abuse is not confined to children, spouses, the elderly, or baseball umpires. The most regularly abused person is the American consumer. It has gone on so long that most people accept it as “just the way things are” and are sure nothing can be done about it. You have been abused as a consumer--unless within the last 12 months you have not shopped for food, called a toll-free number for technical assistance, tried to find “your question” in a list of FAQs, bought an appliance or computer, eaten out, booked a flight, watched cable TV, taken a vacation, used a credit card, paid a medical bill, bought an item on the Internet or purchased a cashmere sweater. If all of your purchases and calls for help ended happily, you are either exceptionally lucky or a wee bit delusional. The fact is abuse of consumers is profitable for corporations, although abuse is not a word they would use.

There’s no shame in being a consumer abused by a corporation. The shame is that more consumers do not fight back when abused. That’s where this blog comes in.

I’ve been a consumerist for more than four decades. I look forward to corporate abuses, especially the compensation and fun parts. The corporations do their part and I do mine. This blog chooses a few of the “better” episodes to amuse and instruct consumers. The blog will not urge you to join a movement or contribute to a cause. Indeed, it is absolutely not about trying to change what corporations do to consumers. Why spoil a good thing?

As for my Manifesto, it owes a lot to Thomas Jefferson’s Declaration of Independence. He used the word abuses to describe what King George and his cohorts were doing: “a long train of abuses…to reduce them under absolute Despotism.” Corporations treat consumers that way.

To see how I fight back, try my blog for a while. Laughter is good for your spirit and getting compensation for abuses is good for your bottom line.