Quote:
Originally Posted by tempest@de
Just out of curiosity, is it normal for the government to intervene in the procedures of a private company? Can the government dictate how a company deals with their customers? How so?
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Very normal everywhere. Gimble pointed out some of the ways this can happen. One way which he only touched upon is lobbying. In a democracy it is usually the squeaky hinge which gets the oil. It goes something like this. A consumer lobby group is formed. This can be at the instigation of genuinely outraged customers or orchestrated by others for their own purposes. Apparently there is already a group on one of the social media sites, as is quite common today. This group makes a lot of noise and the company's reputation is damaged. It comes under pressure. The lobby group engages with politicians and suggest that the law needs changing as the company is intransigent in the face of what the lobby group at least sees as manifest injustice. A law is proposed, in this case, for instance, a law that comprehensively regulates how online accounts can be cancelled or suspended. It sets out a procedure whereby the company must issue a notice of intention to cancel an account giving full particulars of any alleged breach or breach of terms and conditions. It gives the account holder 28 days to respond. If the company still intends to cancel the account it must give notice of its decision, and the account holder has 28 days to lodge an appeal to either an existing tribunal or one specially established for that purpose. It mandates compensation when an account is closed either wrongly or without following the correct procedures. It also introduces, say, an ombudsman to deal with complaints. Politicians sponsoring the Bill use words like fairness, monopoly, public interest, consumer protection and express the view that a company that grows to this size and dominates particular industries acquires obligations to the public, which they have not been honouring. One morning we wake to a whole new bureaucracy and a whole new set of public servants being paid by the public to supervise not just Amazon but all of the large online companies. Compliance costs are of course reflected in prices. Later this regime is likely to apply to smaller and smaller businesses. Some of these smaller businesses will be forced to close because they cannot meet these compliance costs.
I'm not sure how common this is in the US which seems to be a little less anti-business when it comes to consumer protection. But in other countries this is certainly not unknown.