Consumers

Advertising gets a bad rap. So you may not like your favourite TV show being interrupted by Rhonda’s holiday in Bali. Or that “Longer Lasting Sex” billboard plastered up near the local primary school really annoys you. But, before you hate on all of us, please consider the big five benefits of advertising.

Advertising creates something out of nothing
Imagine a motorbike manufacturer who wants to sell more motorbikes. They have $1,000,000 to invest into selling more. They can use the $1,000,000 to either:
1. reduce the price of each bike
2. put a leather seat and chrome exhaust onto each bike
3. do advertising to make the bikes more desirable.

Continue reading "Five fabulous facts about advertising" »

Thrifty spenders – or tightarses as they’re more commonly known – are pretty adept at receiving widespread social disdain.

Admittedly, pinching pennies is a tricky business. One has to really embrace those nicknames, as well as the end-of-meal groans from fellow diners upon whipping out the scientific calculator. And let’s not even get started on those tried and tested anti-Semitic jokes.

Now the tightarse is being targeted with another knife: the future of the Australian retail industry. No biggie.

Continue reading "Thrifty Aussies don’t spell the end for retail" »

Have you ever dealt with the ACCC? Have you ever had an issue that you thought the ACCC should be looking at only to find that the ACCC declined to look at it or seemed to take forever to investigate?

Just ask any supplier or farmer who has had an issue or concern with the major supermarket chains. For well over a year the ACCC has been taking the public position that there’s no evidence to justify an investigation into the alleged practices of the major supermarket chains. Then just recently the ACCC starts actively asking suppliers to come forward with their concerns.

Now there are a few issues that need to be immediately clarified. First and most importantly the ACCC doesn’t need to wait for suppliers, consumers or anyone else to come forward with a complaint in order for the ACCC to investigate. Where the ACCC suspects a possible breach of our competition and consumer laws it can investigate any matter within its jurisdiction and has the power to collect information as part of any investigation.

Continue reading "A lazy government body that needs to get moving" »

If you have a mobile phone, internet service or fixed line and you live in Australia; chances are you’ve experienced had some sort of issue with your service at one time or another. No big deal, right?

You call the customer service helpline of your provider and begin to explain the problem. You might be told you are speaking to the wrong department and get transferred … multiple times. You might be kept on hold. You might be promised a call back. You might, if you’ve spoken to the right department, be promised a solution, which may or may not happen. If not, you’ll have to call back, and possibly even start again.

It’s no great secret that customer service across the telco industry is lacking. Last year was a record year for complaints – almost 200,000 of us had to resort to taking our problem to the Telecommunications Industry Ombudsman. By comparison, the banks – another industry Australians love to complain about – generate around 24,000 complaints a year to the financial ombudsman.

Continue reading "A call for change at our service-challenged telcos" »

We’ve been talking a lot about interest rates this week. And the 30 per cent of us who have mortgages will be keeping our eyes on news websites today, with ANZ expected to push up its lending rates and the rest of the Big Four banks likely to follow. That’s despite the Reserve Bank keeping the official rate on hold earlier in the week.

Interest rates are just one of the many ways that bankers rip us off. It’s pretty much their job. There’s no such thing as a free lunch (or mortgage) when it comes to the banks. The government can only do so much to protect us. Although in the past few years the federal government has started enacting some consumer-oriented reforms in the banking sector.

But the government could be protecting us much better when it comes to one part of our everyday banking: the fees we get charged when we withdraw our dosh from an ATM that our bank doesn’t own.

Continue reading "Those greedy ATMs gobble up more than your card" »

Here we go again. Another festive season and yet another petrol rip off!

A ridiculously unaffordable scenario

Now for some of us there’s nothing new in that - we have simply got used to being ripped off. For the free market theorists and other apologists for the big oil companies and major petrol retailers, like Coles and Woolworths, they like the fact that petrol margins have been growing even if it has been at the expense of motorists.

It’s easy for the free market theorists to turn a blind eye to motorists being gouged as some of the free market theorists may be shareholders of the big petrol retailers or may even earn big dollars advising them. They may even have a company or taxpayer funded petrol card. There’s nothing like a vested interest to cloud a person’s economic frame of mind.

Continue reading "A tip off on stopping the Big Petrol rip off" »

There is too much fake stuff in today’s world. You have to look twice to tell if a woman’s breasts or lips are really her own. And show me a packet of BBQ chips that’s been anywhere near a BBQ.

Yet somehow, we are still suckers for companies who pitch old-fashioned concepts like “home made”, “authentic” and “loyalty”.

So-called loyalty cards are meant to make us feel special. If we fly with Virgin Blue all the time, or shop at DJs by habit, we feel entitled to feel special, and to be rewarded. Companies know this, hence the proliferation of loyalty programs. Yet as we all know deep down, that’s a load of crap.

Continue reading "Festival of Obvious Ideas #4. “Loyalty” is a hoax" »

Consumer spending is good, right? We are told in the media all the time to spend more, and we worry when “consumer confidence” is down. Why is that?

In short, the answer is because we have a GDP to look after. The GDP (Gross Domestic Product) is one of our key financial indicators, and in developed western societies consumer spending makes up approximately 65 per cent of GDP.

If consumer spending is a large determinant of GDP, then the more we spend the higher our GDP and the better the economy. So if we are being told to spend just so we have an increasingly higher GDP, then someone, somewhere must have worked out that this must be good for its citizens right?

Continue reading "Consumption need not be a deadly disease" »

With the debate on the carbon tax getting very emotive it’s essential to understand the economics of the tax and whether it will achieve what it’s setting out to do.

Here the issue is very simple. Will the introduction of a carbon tax lead to a significant reduction in carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gas emissions?

Given that the stated objective of a carbon tax is to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, it’s clear that the success or failure of the tax will depend on the whether or not a reduction is achieved and at what cost. Understanding the cost of the carbon tax is fundamental to understanding its impact on the consumer, particularly given that it’s the consumer who will ultimately pay the tax.

Continue reading "Carbonomics is nice in theory but does it add up?" »

Sitting on my desk is a picture of a fox wearing a green jacket and pink tie. Thanks to a childhood immersed in Beatrix Potter, I’m enchanted by anthropomorphised animals (and smarty-pants words, it seems) but, mostly, I love my fox because he made me laugh.

You see, I ordered him online and he arrived this morning wrapped in recycled paper. “Hi, Angela,” said the note that came with him. “You smell nice and your hair looks great today.”

With service like that, what’s not to love about internet shopping? Plus, you do it in your pyjamas, and it’s delivered right to your door.

Continue reading "Hitting the shops has lost its shine" »

My wife and I came from traditional working class backgrounds and single income families. We are now considered middle class as we live in our own home, we own a newish car and enjoy a comfortable lifestyle because we have worked hard and saved for the future. 

Our home, car and assets are insured and we have managed our finances carefully in order to access such benefits as private health insurance. In the current economic climate we are regarded as “haves” but we seem despised by some elements of the community who consider themselves the “have nots”

American pollster John Zogby sees a growing number of the community falling into the “have not” category. He calls them the “Dreamless Dead” being those who no longer believe in the existence of hard work to achieve success in life.

Continue reading "Financial responsbility can reward when disaster strikes" »

Thankfully a carbon tax is designed to hit big bad polluters and not working families.

I mean, take environmental progressive Bob. Bob’s a model citizen and busy man trying to save the world from the hundreds of big bad carbon polluters required by law to report their environmental vandalism to the government.

He starts by using his mobile phone as an alarm clock in his Canberra bedroom. (Telstra: emissions of 1.43 million tonnes CO2 in 2009-10). It’s cold this morning, so Bob’s gotta have an environmentally considerate 4 minute shower to get clean and warm for the trip up the hill (ACTEW Corporation: 219,000t CO2).

Continue reading "Carbon Bob: Can he fix it?" »

In 1983, money came out of the closet. Up until then any discussion about money was taboo and considered uncouth. No-one ever talked about how much their house was worth, or what shares to buy, or whether to buy Aussie dollars now to get the best rate before they went on holidays.

Term deposits were considered financially sexy. No-one had heard about managed funds, superannuation or property syndicates unless you were among the rich and famous.

At that time treasurer Paul Keating floated the Australian dollar and deregulated the financial system.

Continue reading "Stop talking about your money, spend it!" »

Lost jobs, failing economies, broken marriages. Now you can add a massive upsurge in the level of sexism in ads as one of the GFC’s effects.

The way people are portrayed in advertising has never been what you could call enlightened. But now advertisers are pitching lower than ever before.

Look at these images from Dutch Fashion Label suitsupply’s “Shameless” fashion campaign. The images caused a huge outcry when displayed in a Westfield shopping centre in London. The picture of a man looking disinterestedly up a woman’s dress while she leans back over a stairwell and writhes in ecstasy makes you wonder what urge exactly advertisers are trying to appeal to.

Continue reading "No power in the boardroom? Try the bedroom instead" »

“Have you seen any good examples of greenwash lately? It seems to have died down hasn’t it?”

This question was put to me by a newspaper journalist recently.

That’s the thing with greenwash, it’s hard to spot if you don’t know what you’re looking for. Greenwash is a term given to marketing claims that suggest a product or company is more environmentally friendly than it actually is. The Trade Practices Act forbids misleading claims. But it’s sometimes difficult for investigators to spot, let alone consumers. That’s the problem.

Continue reading "Don’t drink the crap around greywater" »