by Bob Sullivan
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Product Description
What is Gotcha Capitalism?
Coughing up $4 fees for ATM transactions. Iron-clad cell phone contracts you can’t get out of with a crowbar. Paying big bucks for insurance you don’t need on a rental car or forking over $20 a day for supposedly “free” wireless internet. Every day we use banks, cell phones, and credit cards. Every day we book hotels and airline tickets. And every day we get ripped off.
How? Here are just a few examples of how big business can get you:
• You didn’t fill up the rental car with gas?
Gotcha! Gas costs $7 a gallon here.
• Your bank balance fell to $999.99 for one day?
Gotcha! That’ll be $12.
• You miss one payment on that 18-month same-as-cash loan?
Gotcha! That’ll be $512 extra.
• You’re one day late on that electric bill?
Gotcha! All your credit cards now have a 29.99% interest rate.
But not for much longer. In Gotcha Capitalism, MSNBC.com’s “Red Tape Chronicles” columnist Bob Sullivan exposes the ways we’re all cheated by big business, and teaches us how to get our money back–proven strategies that can help you save more than $1,000 a year.
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Average Customer Review:
0 of 0 people found the following review helpful:
 A very enjoyable read and a good reference. , 2008-07-22
This book has been a very good read but it is also quite informative. I would advise anyone to read this before they make any large commitment to anything as this will probably save you money and time from bad decisions.
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
 Poverty by a Thousand Cuts, 2008-07-18
This book is pretty depressing but incredibly informative, as consumer advocate Bob Sullivan gives us the dirt on all matter of fees, surcharges, and other financial shenanigans inflicted on us every day by the corporations we do business with. Sullivan offers a great amount of knowledge on how these fees operate and how much they nibble away at the average consumer's money (the amounts that retirement fund managers skim off of your nest egg are truly sickening), and also includes some tactics for dealing with intransigent customer service reps and potentially helpful consumer's rights groups. Many of Sullivan's tips for avoiding various types of sneaky fees will prove to be very helpful for the sharp-eyed consumer.
However, a few of Sullivan's tips are not too realistic or will be a struggle for average folks, such as keeping $1000 in one's checking account at all times or shopping around among disappearing or nonexistent options for credit cards and cell phones. Sullivan is also prone to conspiracy theorizing at times, especially in the chapter on student loans. Another issue is that Sullivan misses a golden opportunity to explore the idea of how sneaky fees, and the difficulties faced by average consumers in fighting them, are violations of American capitalism and democracy. He only introduces these potentially powerful political and economic arguments in fits and starts, and expanding upon them would have made the book a powerhouse.
But with those flaws aside, this book is an occasionally terrifying and always outrageous (i.e. you'll be outraged) report on the rapidly increasing ways that big corporations rip you off little by little, while systematically dismantling your ability to do anything about it. You could conceivably remove yourself from some parts of this unfair system by rejecting television or telephones, but in the modern wired and globalized financial system you're often powerless against sneaky corporate greed. While some of Sullivan's proposed solutions are a bit problematic, he definitely delivers crucial knowledge for the thinking consumer. [~doomsdayer520~]
0 of 0 people found the following review helpful:
BUY 10 - GIVE TO PEOPLE YOU LOVE, 2008-07-06
Other reviews do an excellent job of encapsulating the information in this book. I would add that as a money coach and radio show host, I have given my clients this book and done two shows about it. I have reports back by several people they have been able to recapture thousands in tricky fees and rate manipulations.
In one case a credit card company convinced a client who pays off the card every month to move to a 0% interest rate card. The fine print that arrived weeks later explained this move gave the company the right to charge a high interest rate to charges she made during the previous 90 days on the old card, even though those balances were fully paid. She had a $[...] charge the next month.
Using the techniques in Gotcha, she was quickly able to reverse this and she got up the nerve to tell a supervisor "your company told me if I moved to the new card it cost me nothing. You shouldn't be allowed to do that." And the representative agreed. While I probably would have said it differently, using words like 'fraud' and 'purposeful material omission,' this moment was profoundly freeing to her.
This book should be turned into a required coarse at the collegiate level. Everyone in the class should participate in lab, where they compare what their various credit card companies, banks, and service providers are doing. And they should, as college kids do so well, rebel.
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
 True, frustrating but doesn't really help, 2008-06-18
The author knows what he's talking about and he covers a lot of ground but there are several reasons not to bother buying this book. Two stars is probably too low bacause he's done his homework, it's just that reading this book can only serve to make you mad and not much else.
1. For most the Gotchas he admits that there's not much you can personally do about it except be aware.
2. The book is very specific in most parts so it already feels dated as new gotchas come along every day.
I think what the author is trying to do it great, it's just the the only real answer to these problems is a wholesale change in the consumer protection laws in the US.
0 of 0 people found the following review helpful:
Not for those with high blood pressure, 2008-06-12
Make sure you have taken your blood pressure meds before you start this book. I had to read it in short bursts because of the effect it had on my BP.
I had been dimly aware of the chicanery that the major corporations were foisting off on us, in the name of "service" and "pass-on taxes" and "fees" but this brought them to the fore. I have always been suspicious of the motives and operations of large organizations of any type, having been part of several and watching them from the inside, and this confirms it.
I do feel sorry for the poor customer assistance personnel who must administer this kind of schmuck, for the programmers who tell the computers to do it to us, but especially for the policy makers who dream this up. I wonder how do they live with their consciences? Or worse, do they believe that they are not doing anything wrong?
I agree with others here that, while the book concentrates on what an individual can do to protect themselves, it leaves largely untouched the question of what can we do about it as a society? What options are available to us to change the direction we are going? How do we overcome the inertia of a system where those who make the money make the rules? I really wanted to see more of that.
Strongly implied was that the regulatory agencies responsible for seeing that private enterprise operate on an ethical level are not doing their jobs. He named a few, such as the Federal Trade Commission, which have had their funds and enforcement personnel reduced since the 80's (Reagonomics = you might remember George Bush, the elder, called them "Voodoo Economics" and now we know he was right) and have become largely toothless. There's much, much more to that story, but I understand that wasn't the intent of the book; it would have been nice if he had referred us to another book, or promised to write one himself.
Another point, perhaps the most important of all, was buried: that of the effects (or lack of them) on the Consumer Price Index. If you wondered why your income wasn't keeping pace with the cost of living (YOUR cost of living, not the Labor Department's CPI), now you know: the basic fees (which are not changing much) are all that companies report to the DOL, not their hidden fee structure, and that and ONLY that is what is used in the calculation. It also says that the DOL is not doing its job very well of ferreting out the REAL costs of goods and services this country consumes.
I plan on buying ten copies of "Gotcha Capitalism" and giving them to friends and family and requesting that they do the same until a groundswell of anger overturns this culture of legalized cheating. I would urge you to do the same if you end up feeling about this like I do when you finish.
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