The Asymmetry of Incompetence

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From Thoreau, who lives nearby and who I really ought to meet someday:

I’m probably just dwelling on the trivialities of my comfortable suburban professional existence, but my basic grievance against big companies is that when they screw up they take 6-8 weeks to fix it, usually after multiple phone calls and whatnot, but if I screw up a penalty is immediately levied. This happens on every scale, from billing snafus with $7 fees, to cases of people being foreclosed on even though they had never missed a payment and spent money on lawyers to prove this, to “Oops, we broke the global economy, could you send $1 trillion to our Nigerian accounts?”

The latest snafus on my end are (1) I’m getting a bill for water service in an apartment that I moved out of, for a billing period that doesn’t overlap my last month in that apartment and (2) I set up autopay with another utility, or at least tried to, something didn’t go through, and now I’m paying a $7 late fee….It’s not the $7, it’s the asymmetry of the responsibility. If I screw up (and I still maintain I did everything necessary for autopay!), I have to pay a late fee. If they screw up, they give me runaround. As long as it’s $7 at stake, fine, but they do this at every level. I think of the hassle I had to go through to get the title for my car after I paid off the loan (early) and I can’t even imagine the hell it must be to have your house foreclosed because of a snafu that they didn’t even notify you of (because of another snafu).

So, I say that we should be able to put large companies on hold when they want something, send them through phone trees, and ask them to re-submit paperwork that we may or may not lose track of.

All in favor, raise your hands. Motion carried! 

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THE FACTS SPEAK FOR THEMSELVES.

At least we hope they will, because that’s our approach to raising the $350,000 in online donations we need right now—during our high-stakes December fundraising push.

It’s the most important month of the year for our fundraising, with upward of 15 percent of our annual online total coming in during the final week—and there’s a lot to say about why Mother Jones’ journalism, and thus hitting that big number, matters tremendously right now.

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So we’re going to try making this as un-annoying as possible. In “Let the Facts Speak for Themselves” we give it our best shot, answering three questions that most any fundraising should try to speak to: Why us, why now, why does it matter?

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If you can afford to part with a few bucks, please support the reporting you get from Mother Jones with a much-needed year-end donation. And please do it now, while you’re thinking about it—with fewer people paying attention to the news like you are, we need everyone with us to get there.

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