Stop Letting The World Push You Around
Stop Letting The World Push You Around
Corporate bullying is unacceptable and you don’t have to put up with it
Corporate bullying is unacceptable and you don’t have to put up with it
In the past 24 hours, I’ve saved nearly $500 by not letting three companies push me around.
Most people would just roll over and take it, but I want you to know that you have agency and power and don’t have to surrender either to greedy bullies.
Company #1
My wife is due to have our first baby in 12 weeks and our car is on its last legs, so I just purchased a nice VW — sight unseen, via the Internet. Thanks to Covid, this is now standard practice, but it’s still terrifying.
Prior to purchase, I negotiated a deal that I’d only forfeit a tiny deposit (enough to cover shipping the car) if we hated it so much that we didn’t want it. The car arrived this morning, and everything was satisfactory except for one thing: There were two major holes in the ceiling fabric. Undisclosed holes. Holes that will cost me several hundred to repair.
I called the company and the sales guy huffed and puffed and yelled and pouted and went through all the stages of grief. I let him whine and moan and blow his horn like a toddler. When he eventually ran out of steam, I stood my ground and said calmly, “That’s all well and good, but you didn’t disclose a very obvious material fact about this car. I’m going to withhold $200 from my final payment to help cover the cost.”
We closed the deal.
Company #2
Clothing a pregnant wife is complicated during Covid. She can’t try anything on, and online clothes shopping leaves much to be desired. Normally Amazon’s return policy is pretty good (and free), but for some reason, three pairs of pants kept getting returned to us with a mounting international shipping bill.
The customer service agent finally gave me a choice: they could refund us for the pants or the shipping, but not both. But you know my rule about false dichotomies: When given two bad options, choose neither.
After more than an hour of me refusing to settle for anything less than a full refund, escalating my case from manager to manager to manager, they wrote the whole thing off, refunded us nearly $250, and let us donate the three pairs of jeans to a local charity.
Company #3
Mastercard is now voice IDing its customers. It’s not opt-in, it’s opt-out. I’ve already asked twice that they not keep my voice on file — it’s an egregious case of surveillance capitalism that contributes nothing to my long-term online safety and everything to their growing file of consumer data on me. (Stripe does the same thing with facial recognition. Completely unethical and unacceptable.)
So today I hammered my way up the Mastercard ranks until I got recorded proof that they will never again record my voice or even ask for permission to do so.
The past 24 hours have helped me realize that we need more Golden Rule Companies — businesses that treat others the way they wish to be treated.
I don’t know who needs to hear this today, but you are worthy of kindness and respect and human decency and economic fairness.
Your body, your face, your voice, your fingerprints — these are yours, not the government’s, not a corporation’s. You have the right to privacy. You have the right to not be bullied and coerced into surrendering pieces of yourself, or hard-earned after-tax dollars from your wallet.
Say no. Mean it.
If you’re a Medium writer, email Stripe’s CEO (Patrick Collison <patrick@stripe.com>, CC Stripe Support <support@stripe.com>) and tell him to take it off your account and reverse their decision to use facial recognition.
If you’re a Mastercard user, call 1–800–263–2263 and tell them to take Voice ID off your account permanently and to never ask to re-add it again.
If a company refuses to honor their promises, cuts corners, overcharges, or under-serves, lies to you, don’t for a second put up with it. Threaten to dump them, or reach out to your chamber of commerce or Better Business Bureau or congressperson or city councilor or any number of people or institutions who can keep them accountable, including a slew of online review sites. You deserve their respect, decency, and fairness.
You extend these things to others on a regular basis, and there’s no reason why the world’s richest companies should be held to a lesser standard.
After all, it’s customers like you that give corporations 100% of their value.
Make them earn it.
Follow Jared on Medium and subscribe to Surviving Tomorrow.