\n<\/p>\n
When Delta Airlines charged Marie Duggan, an economic historian visiting Oaxaca, Mexico, $1,200 to change a scheduled flight to the United States, she was so angry she cancelled and booked a cross-border night-time bus ride instead.<\/p>\n
Duggan thought Delta\u2019s price increase to fly to Phoenix instead of San Francisco, at twice the price of a one-way flight to Phoenix, was an insult and a rip-off. So she took a $250 flight on Aeromexico to Hermosillo, in the north-western state of Sonora, and then a $59 bus across the Mexico border.<\/p>\n
Sonora is on the US state department\u2019s \u2018reconsider travel\u2019 list because of terrorism and crime, Duggan acknowledged, and she was \u201cexhausted\u201d after the trip. But she was also pleased not to have to pay Delta the money. \u201cI thought, \u2018Ha! You think I have no choice, but I know that there is a bus,\u201d she said in an interview. \u201cSo I will slip out of your grasp.\u201d<\/p>\n
A Delta spokesman said that, like the rest of the industry, it relies on \u201cdynamic ticket prices\u201d with \u201cclear rules that determine pricing based on objective details\u201d.<\/p>\n
For the past 100 years, US consumers have powered the US economy, their $21tn in annual spending supported by the business ethos that the \u201ccustomer is king\u201d. Today, that idea is as outdated as a Norman Rockwell painting, say consumer activists, historians, analysts, executives and customers themselves.<\/p>\n
Instead, consumers are bearing the brunt of sweeping developments in the business landscape. Decades of mergers have limited consumer options. Companies are so big they can push industry-friendly regulation and charge what they want, safe in the knowledge that disgruntled customers have nowhere to go.<\/p>\n
No wonder consumers feel so squeezed, disrespected and preyed upon. As a result, they are becoming \u201creactive\u201d, said Alexander DePaoli, a Northeastern University marketing professor who studies consumer anger. They\u2019re starting to see brands as \u201ca rival or an adversary\u201d and are trying to beat them at their own game.<\/p>\n
The power dynamics are so out of whack, though, that dangerous bus rides and product boycotts are no answer. A broader fix may be necessary if the United States is to return to its customer service glory years.<\/p>\n
\u201cAsking why [companies] went \u2018bad\u2019 is like asking why a company that sells reasonably priced goods on the near side of the TSA checkpoint is charging $15 for water on the far side of the TSA checkpoint,\u201d at an airport, said Cory Doctorow, author of Enshitification: <\/em>Why everything suddenly got worse and what to do about it. \u201cIt\u2019s not because they\u2019re evil, it\u2019s because you can\u2019t go anywhere else to buy your water.\u201d<\/p>\n A feeling of forever being ripped off helps explain why consumers have never felt more pessimistic, even though the US economy, by the numbers, continues to perform well.<\/p>\n US consumer sentiment, tracked for over 60 years by the University of Michigan, has hit a new low, thanks to cost-of-living increases many say are eroding their personal finances.<\/p>\n chart showing us consumer sentiment decreasing<\/p>\n At the same time customer complaints about goods and services are at record levels, and surged 16% in the first quarter, according to the university\u2019s American Customer Satisfaction Index, which has tracked the figure since 1994.<\/p>\n Yet unhappy customers decide to stay with the companies they do business with \u2013 because they may think either that another company will treat them as badly, or they simply don\u2019t have an option. \u201cParadoxically, and contrary to what occurs in efficient markets, customer retention has increased,\u201d the satisfaction index\u2019s founder, Claes Fornell, wrote in May.<\/p>\n In many cases, Americans just have no other options, unlike in other developed consumer economies, <\/strong>where stricter anti-monopoly policing has protected competition.<\/p>\n In the UK, \u201cI have multiple choices of broadband supplier and energy supplier,\u201d explains Marcus Herbert, the editor of Money Saving Expert, an influential British consumer advocate website. \u201cConsumers have true power in a world where they can switch their business to another provider.\u201d<\/p>\n With customers stuck and competitors gone, companies can raise prices without improving customer satisfaction, Fornell explained in February. \u201cThese are not signs of a healthy economy,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n Corporate profits after tax jumped sharply during Covid, and hit a seasonally adjusted annual rate of $3.7tn by the end of 2024, about double what they were in 2012.<\/p>\n chart showing increasing US corporate profits<\/p>\n Despite a hit from tariffs at the end of 2025 and the impact of the US and Israel war with Iran, they jumped again in recent months, to $3.9tn in the first quarter of 2026. <\/p>\n The pandemic \u201caccelerated the transition toward the digital economy, which likely helped firms, particularly those in the retail and wholesale trade industries, produce more with fewer resources\u201d, St Louis Fed\u2019s economist, Ricardo Martin, explained.<\/p>\n As a percentage of gross domestic product (GDP) \u2013 the widest measure of the US economy \u2013 corporate profits hit a post second world war high of 15.8% in the fourth quarter of 2025. At the same time, employee compensation, as a share of GDP, has dropped to less than 10%.<\/p>\n The gap between company profits and employee compensation, as a share of GDP, has never been greater, notes KPMG\u2019s chief economist, Diane C Swonk. It is essentially \u201ca measure of inequality, which creates social and economic instability\u201d.<\/p>\n The French revolution, she notes drily, \u201cis an extreme example\u201d of that instability.<\/p>\n Things feel so bad, especially for older Americans, because many had it so good for years.<\/p>\n Being a US consumer through the later decades of the 1900s was marked by how much more stuff, in the form of goods and some services, many people could afford than generations before. Consumers had consolidation to thank for relatively lower prices and greater choice, even as big box stores like Walmart hollowed out downtowns and left behind low-wage jobs.<\/p>\n Goods prices, in relation to income, plummeted as manufacturing moved overseas and big national retailers grew, squeezed out economies of scale and took control of distribution networks. The introduction of Amazon exacerbated that lower prices trend.<\/p>\n \u201cAs frustrated as people are in the US, there is a decline between 1990 and 2012 of 33% cost of retail goods as related to your income,\u201d said Sergio Ocampo, an economics professor at the University of Western Ontario who researches retail concentration. \u201cThat is almost impossible to achieve without the efficiency gains from consolidation.\u201d<\/p>\n The sharp declines in retail prices stalled by the end of the 2010s, Ocampo notes, and the infrastructure that these giant companies control is a hurdle to new players. \u201cThere is nothing new coming \u2026 now if you want to start a new retail business you run into problems,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n Food, airlines and telecoms have similar trajectories.<\/p>\n Four giant food-producing companies control at least 50% of the market for the most popular groceries Americans buy, a 2021 Guardian investigation found.<\/p>\n The relative cost of airfare plummeted in the 1970s, making air travel affordable for the masses, it is now creeping up and service complaints hit new records in 2024. More than 20 airlines in the 1970s have merged into seven, just four airlines control nearly 70% of total market share and one airline dominates market share in several major domestic airports.<\/p>\n And a series of multibillion-dollar telecom mergers in recent years has been followed by broadcast consolidation that\u2019s creating a dangerous concentration of one-stop information, mobile, internet and entertainment giants.<\/p>\n Michael Mooney, a retired small business owner in Holland, Michigan, navigated long wait times, grating ad loops, multiple hangups and an argument with a company representative before he could cancel his cable package with Spectrum. The company charged him $170 a month to keep his internet, then started raising the price.<\/p>\n \u201cI would jump to another company in a heartbeat, but as with many people I\u2019m sure, there is no alternative company where I live \u2026 What a racket. I thought regional monopolies were illegal,\u201d Mooney told the Guardian.<\/p>\n All that consumer rage can be channeled, says Doctorow, who recommends getting involved in very local politics to address specific problems. For example, community-owned broadband networks to address telecom deserts have been backed by voters and residents across the political spectrum. \u201cThe only Americans who like their internet are Americans with municipal fiber, and most of them are rural red state towns,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n Bipartisan lawmakers have introduced 40 bills in 24 states to curb \u201csurveillance pricing\u201d in which companies use personal data to set individual prices, so far in 2026. New class-action lawsuits are taking on JetBlue and other companies over the issue.<\/p>\n Consumers\u2019 rising outrage is part of a growing awareness that many of these business practices are a destructive force on the economy, said Lindsay Owens, the executive director of the Groundwork Collaborative, a Washington thinktank aimed at increasing public power.<\/p>\n \u201cThe incredible exponential growth in efforts to contain dynamic pricing suggests we may be reaching a tipping point,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n And local authorities are stepping up.<\/p>\n States and cities are \u201creally taking up the mantle on this and doing great work\u201d, on passing rules on junk fees and surveillance pricing, said Susan Weinstock, the CEO of the Consumer Federation of America, an umbrella group of consumer activists. \u201cOnce California and New York pass the laws, industry has to listen because that\u2019s a lot of customers,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n The Guardian is examining the increasingly antagonistic relationship between companies and consumers in the United States. If you\u2019ve found yourself going to extreme measures to stop giving money to a company that you think is treating you badly, we\u2019d love to hear about it here or at consumed@theguardian.com.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" When Delta Airlines charged Marie Duggan, an economic historian visiting Oaxaca, Mexico, $1,200 to change a scheduled flight to the United States, she was so angry she cancelled and booked a cross-border night-time bus ride instead. Duggan thought Delta\u2019s price increase to fly to Phoenix instead of San Francisco, at twice the price of a<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":50642,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[49],"tags":[303,7250,254,3016,1099,745,24847,7730],"class_list":{"0":"post-50641","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-business","8":"tag-business","9":"tag-consumers","10":"tag-give","11":"tag-profits","12":"tag-record","13":"tag-service","14":"tag-somethings","15":"tag-terrible"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50641","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=50641"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50641\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/50642"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=50641"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=50641"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=50641"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Trapped consumers, soaring profits<\/strong><\/h2>\n
Consolidation\u2019s benefits dry up<\/strong><\/h2>\n
A tipping point?<\/strong><\/h2>\n