The Consumerist Manifesto Handbook
Charles J. Selden, 2011
Sterling Publishers
223 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781402786488
Summary
The book may inspire readers to no longer accept bad products and indifferent customer service. The book explains the Six Abuses of consumers by corporations—and what can be done when abused by Deception and Manipulation, Rush to Market, Defect Toleration, Outsourcing, Fulfillment Failures and Customer Disservice.
The book uses my consumerist battles to “instruct and delight.” The first half of the book uses comical encounters with corporations from industries like telecoms, airlines, food producers and supermarkets, clothing stores, health services, automobile makers and service centers. The second half shows how to think like an MBA in order how to fight back, sort of
a “Consumers Field Manual” for productively fighting for compensation.
When it was in its final draft, two otherwise brilliant Sterling Publishing editors thought “The Confidential Memo” summary from my make-believe Customer Service Department (pages 124-131) was no fake, but actually a leaked document. The editors wanted me to identify the corporation. Either I am not a good satirist or the corporate world is too much with us. Another case of Truth in Fiction—or Non-Fiction. (From the author.)
Author Bio
• Birth—1936
• Where—Hardford, Connecticut, USA
• Education—B.A., Trinity College; M.A., Iowa
Writers' Workshop; M.A., Stanford University;
M.B.A, Pepperdine University
• Currently—lives in Monclair, NJ and Palo
Alto, CA
In his words:
I have had four careers: I started as a college English teacher at Baker University in Baldwin City, Kansas after graduating from University of Iowa. Went to Stanford to get the requisite PhD to pursue my goal of becoming an English professor. Took only two semesters for an early epiphany: I was no more suited for “research” of the sort Stanford’s English faculty had in mind than I was for being an astronaut.
I talked my way into Stanford’s Communication Department and found myself. I taught for a while at San Jose City College. Then came an opportunity to go into textbook publishing with Addison-Wesley in CA. I picked up an MBA while at A-W.
Random House asked me to move to NYC to be the “Media Publisher” in 1979 of a company RH had just acquired. During my RH years I wrote Asking Just-Right Business Questions (Crown, 1987).
In 1986 I had an offer to manage a small video duplication company, which I suggested become a video services company. In 1992 a partner and I bought it, renaming it Full Perspective Video Services. Our clients were PBS itself, several PBS stations, Sesame Street, Golf Digest, several producers and a variety of large corporations like Caterpillar Tractor. I sold FPV to my partner in 2006 to start my current career as a writer and blogger. For about 20 years I have kept files and thought about this book.
I have always been a consumerist, but with a sense of humor adjusted for absurdity. My gross, measured by cash, credits, and stuff of genuine value is currently (and conservatively) over $122,000 adjusted for inflation. I don’t include upgrades, better treatment and incidental amenities. The dollars are roughly 90% documentable. (The stories are of course subject to poetic license, even if I am a non-fiction writer.) When battling corporations, one must think the way they do and be as creative as they are.
As good as the cash is, the comedy is better: The comic material resides in corporate huffery and puffery, attempts to explain product failures and maddening service problems. Corporations put obstacles in the way of dissatisfied consumers because corporations know what they are doing: Get rid of the many and pay off the few.
They have their operating principles and I have mine, which are obviously based on theirs:
—Expect products and services to be as perfect as the dollars paid for them.
—When anything goes wrong, assume you are not the only one who is experiencing the abuse. (They know but won’t tell.)
—Put a dollar value on your time and keep track of how much time was needed to find a decision maker who will compensate you for your disappointment with a product or service.
—Enjoy the comedy and get the cash—or credits or useful coupons or extra points or case of pasta sauce or a papaya fed exxed to you. (From the author.)
Book Reviews
(No mainstream press reviews have been posted online for this book. See GoodReads for helpful reader reviews.)
Discussion Questions
1. What are your expectations when you buy a product or service?
2. Why do corporations treat us the way they do?
3. Do corporations intentionally mislead consumers?
4. When corporations mislead, does it help consumerists if the corporations are penalized?
5. Is the author [of this book] odd?
6. Is the author spiritually defective?
7. Has a corporation abused you lately?
8. Did this book give you a plan of action for a product or service that recently let you down?
9. Is there an official you can contact? How will you measure results?
10. If more consumers were to adopt the author’s approach, what would happen?
(Questions from the book—Appendix D, "Book Club Action," pages 209-213. Charts and tools to use are included.)