If you want your money back, sure. The alternative is to fight a company experienced at not giving refunds.
As for warning the community, this kind of thing happens all over the place all the time in all kinds of industries. Complaints to BBB and Yelp tend to be famously ineffective although possibly will demonstrate good citizenship to those who don’t know better. Overall, this post is a bit confusing—it’s like someone from a completely different society was suddenly transported to modern USA. What are you asking / telling us?
I don’t think the post is confusing. Everyone is young once. Everyone has that time where, for the first time in their life, sorting out the gas/internet/leak/AC is their responsibility. Many people, within the first couple of times they need to do this, get stung and learn a valuable lesson. Depending on how lucky/unlucky you are you could go a long way before encountering something like this. And, for everyone, (at least for me) the first time this happens it is a real surprise. Yes, maybe at an academic level you were able to imagine that there might be conmen out there trying to rob you—but that acadmeic understanding has no power over your perception of reality, because it has never actually intruded on your life. When you were buying stuff in shops or online you never got stung because you were comparing products/websites. This is the first time you are buying a service where the price tag wasn’t agreed upon beforehand.
The sting comes fairly late in life. When you are renting its the landlord’s problem.
I do not of course know your intentions, but this comment really rubbed me the wrong way:
Most importantly, there’s the everybody-knows dynamic (which, unrelatedly, Zvi has written about). Something that you happen to know is usually not as common knowledge as you think, and even if this case actually is mostly common knowledge, you could probably have found a way to write it that sounds nicer (i.e. less of a you’re-an-ignorant-outsider vibe) and/or better supported (got any stats/links showing how common this kind of scamming really is?)
Less importantly, the ‘modern USA’ phrasing feels to me like it’s taking a dig at something, like (a less extreme version of) whichever of the following feels most unfair to you: “of course this kind of scamming is common—welcome to capitalism”, or “of course this kind of scamming is common—welcome to Biden’s USA”.
Thanks for your reply. Sorry about that second bullet point and I no longer endorse it—I think that after being annoyed by the first issue, I was in a looking-for-trouble frame of mind while interpreting the rest and read in something that really wasn’t there.
Overall, this post is a bit confusing—it’s like someone from a completely different society was suddenly transported to modern USA. What are you asking / telling us?
I had a similar reaction, I had the impression that Zvi is more worldly and jaded than the median LWer.
Complaints to BBB and Yelp tend to be famously ineffective
BBB may be ineffective at changing public behavior overall, or the company’s behavior, but in my experience it is effective at getting monetary results for individual complaints. I have used the BBB twice after failing every other method I could think of. Surprisingly I was contacted and fully 100% refunded very quickly, after doing the legwork for well documented BBB complaints. Both cases were egregious (clearly a full refund was warranted) but all other complaints got me absolutely nothing, not even a partial refund, so there was something special about using BBB.
This experience has changed my own behavior. BBB complaints require identity and documentation and I think they are far more reliable than a typical online review. Both companies had a large number of public BBB complaints that I could have checked in advance. Especially in the case of anything with a recurring fee, or any company that is supposed to bill my medical insurance, I now religiously check their BBB information before committing. Same for home repair, plumbing, or any large project.
For small companies you can’t find much, so it’s not a huge help, but the BBB is a good source of information in cases it does cover. Please report this company to the BBB. Especially if they have no BBB complaints yet.
The other place I check on contractors is Facebook local groups. Find the most active group for your local neighborhood, town, city, whatever, and just search for posts in the last few years. This typically filters out the worst offenders.
If you want your money back, sure. The alternative is to fight a company experienced at not giving refunds.
As for warning the community, this kind of thing happens all over the place all the time in all kinds of industries. Complaints to BBB and Yelp tend to be famously ineffective although possibly will demonstrate good citizenship to those who don’t know better. Overall, this post is a bit confusing—it’s like someone from a completely different society was suddenly transported to modern USA. What are you asking / telling us?
I don’t think the post is confusing. Everyone is young once. Everyone has that time where, for the first time in their life, sorting out the gas/internet/leak/AC is their responsibility. Many people, within the first couple of times they need to do this, get stung and learn a valuable lesson. Depending on how lucky/unlucky you are you could go a long way before encountering something like this. And, for everyone, (at least for me) the first time this happens it is a real surprise. Yes, maybe at an academic level you were able to imagine that there might be conmen out there trying to rob you—but that acadmeic understanding has no power over your perception of reality, because it has never actually intruded on your life. When you were buying stuff in shops or online you never got stung because you were comparing products/websites. This is the first time you are buying a service where the price tag wasn’t agreed upon beforehand.
The sting comes fairly late in life. When you are renting its the landlord’s problem.
I do not of course know your intentions, but this comment really rubbed me the wrong way:
Most importantly, there’s the everybody-knows dynamic (which, unrelatedly, Zvi has written about). Something that you happen to know is usually not as common knowledge as you think, and even if this case actually is mostly common knowledge, you could probably have found a way to write it that sounds nicer (i.e. less of a you’re-an-ignorant-outsider vibe) and/or better supported (got any stats/links showing how common this kind of scamming really is?)
Less importantly, the ‘modern USA’ phrasing feels to me like it’s taking a dig at something, like (a less extreme version of) whichever of the following feels most unfair to you: “of course this kind of scamming is common—welcome to capitalism”, or “of course this kind of scamming is common—welcome to Biden’s USA”.First bullet, those are good points. It is an interesting question how one would good data on this sort of thing and how accurate that data would be.
Second, this isn’t the intention, it’s to show that the story sounds bizarre. It’s not a political comment.
Thanks for your reply. Sorry about that second bullet point and I no longer endorse it—I think that after being annoyed by the first issue, I was in a looking-for-trouble frame of mind while interpreting the rest and read in something that really wasn’t there.
I had a similar reaction, I had the impression that Zvi is more worldly and jaded than the median LWer.
BBB may be ineffective at changing public behavior overall, or the company’s behavior, but in my experience it is effective at getting monetary results for individual complaints. I have used the BBB twice after failing every other method I could think of. Surprisingly I was contacted and fully 100% refunded very quickly, after doing the legwork for well documented BBB complaints. Both cases were egregious (clearly a full refund was warranted) but all other complaints got me absolutely nothing, not even a partial refund, so there was something special about using BBB.
This experience has changed my own behavior. BBB complaints require identity and documentation and I think they are far more reliable than a typical online review. Both companies had a large number of public BBB complaints that I could have checked in advance. Especially in the case of anything with a recurring fee, or any company that is supposed to bill my medical insurance, I now religiously check their BBB information before committing. Same for home repair, plumbing, or any large project.
For small companies you can’t find much, so it’s not a huge help, but the BBB is a good source of information in cases it does cover. Please report this company to the BBB. Especially if they have no BBB complaints yet.
The other place I check on contractors is Facebook local groups. Find the most active group for your local neighborhood, town, city, whatever, and just search for posts in the last few years. This typically filters out the worst offenders.