This is an 'old man yells at cloud' bugbear of mine. I absolutely resent that every single interaction I have with a service provider now feels like a constant fight to not be tricked, bamboozled, or otherwise exploited. Goes hand-in-hand with so many services being deliberately hamstrung in order to shepherd customers into shitty compromises.

Like… I just want to exchange some amount money for goods and services without having to constantly arse around trying to figure out how much I'm being swindled. I'd easily fork over more money for services from a brand that I could generally expect isn't trying to take me for a ride with every interaction.

I totally agree but .. I feel companies evolve in an environment they do not control. If companies could just offer goods and services at a fair price without arsing around and be successful, I feel like we'd have a ton of such companies. I could be overly cynical.

Auto rentals have to the absolute worst in that regard. Everything results in the existing contract being destroyed (along with any favorable rates attached to it) and needing a new contract created at whatever prices they want. It is a cash grab hoping to catch you when you are at your most vulnerable, there is no technical reason for it. In true western fashion you have to want or need the thing the requires the reservation to be altered, so it’s your own fault the rate has to change.

In some states you can’t even use a different credit card without destroying the contract - if you change the number or it gets reissued with a new expiration date then tough cookies to you. I figured out this trick early on so I have a credit card that is only used for car rentals to minimize the chance I’d ever need to replace it.

Luckily I’m not flying these days due to Covid and currently live in a state where rental car companies are required by law to accept cash regardless of how the registration was booked, so they tone down the credit card specificity because they prefer you use a card.

Couldn't many such models be murdered, by having automated transactions standards and apps, that kill contracts that return no value and reinstate them on reuse. Basically auto-kill the gymn contract, if i do not visit and auto-sign in on reentry?

Basically disrupt the abuse of the un-buisness-savy, by providing them a with automated buisness-savyness?

For the gym it is people who aspire to go to the gym, not simply forget. Canceling the membership is admitting failure in this mindset

True but even cancelling is a difficult process. My husband had to go in to his old gym with utility bills from our new house and a highlighted version of the paperwork he signed, showing that he could cancel because we had moved.

It is interesting to see how different gym cultures across the world are.

Here people will usually pre-pay a certain # of entries or a certain time period, often with cash, and no one asks for any details except name. Hard-to-cancel recurring membership isn't a thing.

We do not have many gym chains, though.

That's one reason I'm long-term hopeful about Smart Contracts. If they are adopted, they may force/encourage a re-evaluation about all kinds of things, including predatory aspects of banking. For example, let's reconsider if poor people should really be hit with extra charges when they hit $.0 on their bank account.

Smart Contracts are not something a normal person can understand. You overestimate your own intelligence and peoples diligence and willingness to tolerate complexity.

But smart contract, demand standardized interaction interfaces to work the world. Basically they depend on the automatability of all legal work / bureaucracy.

That's fair, but brand reputation can carry society past that.

They could be defeated in multiple ways, as can most business models... good and ugly. The ones that exist are the ones that survived.

That said, they exist because it works. There's no way FB could make the money it makes by selling its product to consumers, but it can by snooping, manipulating and advertising. Banking goes in cycles and modes, but it's one ugly after another usually. Maybe they make steady, risk free profits while externalizing long tail risks. Maybe they enjoy a low competition regulated market that lets them fleece captive customers. Etc.

The oldest law codes we have show evidence of bankers being bold, usury and whatnot.

In a lot of the big, egregious examples (FB, Citibank, etc.)... killing the abuse would be turning a $1trn industry into a $1bn industry. It's certainly possible to do social media or consumer banking in a much smaller/cheaper way.