A Collection of Consumers’ Pet Gripes in 1986

Let me sum up 1986 from the consumer’s viewpoint, as gleaned from a year of calls, cards and letters. People were apparently most irritated by banks, phone companies, airlines and direct mail companies. They felt tricked by many mail solicitations, befuddled and perhaps bediddled by airline fares, outraged by their phone company’s shrinking service and insulted by their bank’s seemingly gratuitous charges.

Significantly, three out of four of these industries are deregulated, a policy meant to increase competition to the consumer’s benefit. It also seems to throw industry into immediate and apparently insoluble chaos, indicating that there’s something wrong with either the principle of deregulation or with American industry.

Any such New Year’s hit list requires omissions--increased complaints about retail service, misuse of the word “sale,” huckster new-car promotions, more desperate inquiries about insurance (particularly auto) and about the IRS in all it does.

But the consumer aggravations listed below drew the most calls--they or related incidents in the same business, for they’re chosen as representative of a kind.

ITEM: The “Mini Piano,” a “portable, fully electronic entertainment system, with carrying case,” offered nationwide for an incredible $11.27 or $12.47 by two New York mail order houses, among others. Phones at Better Business Bureaus rang “off the hook,” particularly in New York. The pitch didn’t say the piano was the size of a 1 3/4-by-3 3/4-inch cassette tape. Neither did one big catalogue house, although “Not recommended for children under 3” hinted that the thing could almost be swallowed whole.

This overblown little toy is most interesting for the calls it generated and for its very existence in a day of consumer savvy and official alertness. But with the great growth in direct mail marketing, there’s also an increase in the shady and the tacky.

1986 brought widespread announcements of sweepstakes “wins” and “pick-up-your-prize” promotions, as well as new depths in packaging trickery. A favorite: the American Civil Liberties Union’s recent solicitation labeled “Cease and Desist Order Enclosed: Please open immediately.”

ITEM: Cashier’s check charges, such as the $3.50 that Bank of America now deducts from each payout of monthly interest on many time deposit accounts. The alternative is establishing another B of A account to receive the interest. Some customers have been told that picking up the money in cash and in person is not an option and that they may also be charged for their final check at maturity (both contrary, says a spokesman, to corporate policy).

Small wonder that consumers equate “unbundled” costs with unbridled prices. There are charges for writing bad checks and for depositing someone else’s bad check, charges for getting cancelled checks back and for check “safekeeping” (not getting them back).

Cashier’s check charges seem the ultimate contrivance, applied to both the discretionary purchase of a two-party check and the non-discretionary--withdrawal of balances. Some find such charges removed when they point out their high balance. Some find it removed when they offer to take the sum total in cash instead, and some only when they turn to the lobby and cry, “The bank won’t give us our money!”

Are not company checks a standard cost of doing business, a convenience, in fact, as much for the company as the recipient? Where will “explicit” pricing end?

ITEM: New phone company charges for repairing “inside wiring”--the stuff in the walls, between the outside phone box and the inside jack (maybe even including the box and the jacks, who knows yet?). Alternatively, with big heart and for a monthly fee, phone companies will “continue to provide . . . the full protection you need against any and all inside wire problems” (General Telephone of California).

Price varies, inexplicably: In Los Angeles alone, General Telephone wants 95 cents a month, or $85 minimum per service call (plus an astounding “one-time premises inspection/repair fee of $85” if one doesn’t sign up by April), while Pacific Bell wants 50 cents a month, or $65 a service call.

There’s some public squabble over whether the Federal Communications Commission had the right to deregulate inside wiring, adding just another thing that the local phone company doesn’t have to do to earn its surprisingly stable monthly fee. There’s also some question whether this newest deregulation improves anything for consumers.

One in a continuing series of tedious decisions involving phones, the inside wiring question presents consumers with a lot of unknowns. Who knows how often past problems involved inside wiring, how they’ll know in the future, whether jacks and boxes are included, whether landlords or tenants own the wires, what exactly they’ll get for their protection money, how the charges were calculated, and whether monthly rates will reflect the fact that ratepayers no longer subsidize these repairs? Who knows whether they need such insurance?

ITEM: The choice of flights and fares on just one year-end trip from Washington to Miami--about 60 different flights, and almost as many fares, from a high of $377 one way to a low of $79 (half of a $158 round trip).

On Eastern alone, a traveler was offered a $377 regular first class, $189 special first class, $290 “published” coach, $149 peak special coach, or $99 off-peak special coach.

It puts a fitting end to a year in which deregulated air fares were so variable that one travel agent labeled a particular fare “good between now and the time I hang up.” Indeed, another traveler reserved special $69 AirCal coach fares to go from Los Angeles to San Francisco, set out to meet the pickup deadline of Nov. 4, and learned that the fare had changed Oct. 28 to $89 (“economy coach,” as compared to $109 “regular” coach and $49 “limited” coach).

Ordinary mortals can hardly absorb this roster of fares--apparently industry’s vision of competition--let alone judge whether they’re better off. The problem is partly constant fare changes, partly the built-in flexibility of “capacity-controlled” fares: the greater the demand on a flight, the fewer the discount seats.

Consider, however, People Express, which started out simple and idealistic--all seats one fare per flight, first come, first served--and ultimately sold out.

Consider also that different fares for the same seats and the same service may soon yield to greater distinctions among seats and service depending on the fare paid.

Eager to guarantee full-fare passengers better seats, United Airlines no longer permits most discount passengers advance seat assignments. The airlines may yet bring back steerage class, at 40,000 feet.

Happy New Year!