Quote: (10-27-2015 10:02 AM)Phoenix Wrote:
Quote: (10-27-2015 09:04 AM)Ryre Wrote:
Businessman's hamster:
"Let's get people to sign long-term contracts for our services and then provide the absolute least, worst service we can get away with. Let's hope they just stop using our service but keep paying. We'll make it as hard to cancel as we can and might just 'lose' their paperwork a few times if they do try to cancel. If they object we'll tell them 'hey, you signed the contract, you are morally bound to pay.' Meanwhile let's play hardball with our employees, suppliers, landlord, the government, etc. If it is cheaper to renegotiate, default, go bankrupt, sue, pay a penalty, etc. than to do the right thing, then fuck morality."
Indeed comrade, the gym owner uses the contract to exploit us! He is a decadent parasite upon the proletariat! His tricks won't work on us. If he demands the payment we agreed to, we'll just get everyone to call him a bad guy until he cowers in fear and stops asking for it! Honouring agreements is oppression! Everyone knows that there is no such thing as "competition", "reputation", and "inspecting the product before you buy", and that all these are merely capitalist lies and propaganda from the entrenched and collaborating gym industrialists.
That aside, best bring your mother along next time you sign a contract, lest baddy businessman 'gets you' again.
I hear what you are saying, I do. I should have considered more carefully before I joined. Fact of the matter is if I felt totally morally at ease with this I would not be bothering to defend my decision. That said, my position is not as far out as you make it. I am not advocating against the free market. I am advocating acting in the free market toward businesses the way businesses act in the free market toward each other (and toward you and me).
I think you and I differ in that I believe there is an imbalance of power here. Yes, I voluntarily signed, I had the power not to. But the idea that two equal market players, me and the corporation, came together and negotiated an agreement, as happens in abstract free market theory, is a fiction. What do you think would have happened if I had started crossing out terms on the contract and adding my own? Did the sales rep even have the power to negotiate with me? The situation was take it or leave it. If I recall correctly the gym only offers long-term contracts, i.e. I did not agree to one to get a lower price. Why, as I said above, do they have the ability to fuck with my credit while I have no equivalent power?
If a market player of equal power came to them, e.g. their landlord, a supplier, etc., and asked to renegotiate, the gym would have to consider it--because the alternative is litigation which has its own costs. But if I ask to renegotiate they can tell me to fuck off. I have no credible threat of litigation--they don't have to lift a finger to send my contract to a debt collector and fuck me.
Given such an unequal power balance in a system I did not create, I am not inclined to be overly scrupulous. They require certain documents to end a contract. Fine, I will provide one of those documents. I will do so without forging anything. As to whether I am really changing residence? Sue me and find out in discovery.
