Category Archives: Consumer Affairs

One of the most productive posts on my blog has been this Sprint-bashing post from 2005. It’s still the top Google result for “sprint fuckers” and the #2 result for “fucking sprint” and “fuck sprint”. (I should probably be using this to establish my social media SEO cred.)

Unfortunately, that wasn’t the end of my association with Sprint. I also had Sprint long distance service via a special deal I got when I signed up for the phone. It was actually a good deal for a while, but eventually we stopped using it, since our cell phones have free long distance. At some point, sprint announced that they were cancelling the deal, and the transactions for it stopped appearing on our bill.

Then, a couple of months ago, some collection agency called me to say I owed $52.63 to Sprint. After explaining several times that I wasn’t about to give out my credit card or bank information to a random stranger on the phone, I got the guy to tell me how to pay the bill online, and I told him I’d pay it that day if Sprint confirmed that I owed them money.

Sprint confirmed it, so I paid the bill. Since I pay my regular phone bills, and since Sprint had never sent me a bill for this amount, I can only conclude that some fucker at Sprint thought it would be cheaper to turn over all bills for dropped long distance customers to a collection agency than to develop a business process for issuing their own bills. Either that, or they’re just massively incompetent.

Then today, I got another bill from the fuckers at Sprint. Apparently, Sprint is still my assigned long distance company. I wish I’d noticed that. You see, back in February, my wife accidentally used our landline to make a 25 minute call to Florida. Now how much would you think that would cost? Seventy five cents? $1.75 at 7 cents per minute? Or maybe because we’re not a regular long distance customer, they’d charge something obscene like 25 cents per minute for a total of $6.25?

Would you believe they want $40.66?

Motherfucker!

That’s over a buck a minute for domestic long distance! No wonder people are still commenting on that last Sprint post six fucking years later! The folks at Sprint are still the same fuckers they’ve always been! I fucking hate those fuckers!

Fuck!

Well, not quite, but this isn’t good. After last year’s problems with lead paint in children’s toys, Congress passed new laws to regulate the industry.

Without changes to strict new safety rules…mom-and-pop toy makers and retailers could be forced to conduct testing and labeling they can’t afford, even if they use materials as benign as unfinished wood, organic cotton and beeswax.

…

U.S. Rep. Bobby Rush, D-Ill., lead sponsor of the legislation, says toy makers should not worry. Rush points out that the law already exempts products and materials that do not threaten public safety or health.

That’s a great theory, but as usual, Congress punted and left the details to a regulatory agency:

Determining what materials fall under that exemption falls to the [Consumer Product Safety Commission], however, which has yet to issue specific guidelines. With a Feb. 10 deadline for complying with the law, small toy makers say they have no choice but to act as if its rules apply to them or risk facing fines of $100,000 per violation.

This is a great example of why us libertarians don’t like government interference in the market: Even in an area like product safety where we’re willing to tolerate a fair amount of government intrusion, it’s hard for one central planner to get the details right.

It’s worse than mere ignorance, however, there’s also the problem of regulatory capture, where a regulatory agency—or Congress itself—begins to enforce the agenda of the major players in the industry it’s supposed to be regulating.

One European toy maker has already announced it will stop its exports to the U.S. because of the law’s costs and uncertainties. Selecta Spielzeug, a German company, said earlier this month that it will stop shipping its wooden push toys, games and other products to 1,200 U.S. stores after Dec. 31.

Apparently, this new toy safety law is hurting foreign and independant toymakers, both of which will now provide less competition for major domestic toy manufacturers. How did that happen? Did it have anything to do with the $850,000 worth of lobbying by just Mattel and Hasbro during the last election cycle?

I just threw away the 12-page manual that came with my small desk fan, including 2 pages of IMPORTANT INFORMATION TO PREVENT INJURY.

So if I suddenly stop blogging, you’ll know what went wrong.

I was installing new hardware in a friend’s computer today, and I discovered I needed an internal power supply cable. This is a four-wire cable with white nylon connectors at each end. I figured I could just run out to good old Radio Shack to get one.

When I got there, however, the sales clerk didn’t have a clue what I was talking about. I looked around a bit, but they didn’t even carry parts like that.

The PC industry has been using these for at least 20 years now. Here’s a picture of one at MicroCenter. Radio Shack is a shadow of it’s former self.