A leading consumer advocate reveals how to protect your money, time, and integrity from corrupt businessesOnce upon a time store prices were simple and fair, businesses stood behind their products with guarantees free of fine print and loopholes, and companies genuinely seemed to care about their valued customers--but those days are long gone. In this groundbreaking expose, consumer advocate Christopher Elliot reveals the broken relationship between American consumers and businesses and explains how companies came to believe that fooling their customers was a viable, and profitable, business plan.
"Scammed" explores how companies control information to mislead, distort the truth, and even outright lie to their consumers.Exposes the various ways companies have led their war against information--from seductive ads, disingenuous fine print, and unconventional promotions that involve seeding discussion forums and blogs with company-friendly commentsOffers consumers insider knowledge of the system, reasonable expectations, and a clear understanding of the games businesses playChristopher Elliott is one of the nation's foremost consumer advocates.
Protect yourself, your time, and your money from the predators of the consumer world. Armed with knowledge, readers will become far more discerning and every business's worst nightmare.
My Review:
Pros: Going into this book, just starting it, I had no problems. Though, I was a bit mislead because I thought it would be a financial version of "Eat this, not that." I appreciated that the writing was easy to understand, held my interest even if it didn't encourage the best speed-of-reading (took me about four days to trudge through this one). and I liked that it didn't seem biased toward either consumer or company.
Cons: There was definitely SOME kind of bias there. It was towards the Consumer advocates. Other idisyncracies that got under my skin: The use of "gotcha" and "getcha", abundant cliches--"By hook or crook", "Heck of a lot of...", and this little gem of a quote: "...or whatever Frankenstein's monster was afraid of." that popped up around the same time that the author was disparaging consumers for only reading fluff and not "real" news/reading.
Movie Potential: No. Definitely Not.
Writing style: Easy to follow, but towards the middle just made me angry. This is NOT a book that made my brain happy. In fact, it aggravated me.
Format: Physical book.
Overall Rating: 2/5
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