Interesting claim. If they offered "much better service, selection, product knowledge and comparable prices", how did the borg run them out of business? There must be some pretty stupid consumers where you live. Most that I know around here shop the Borg for price, selection (breadth, not depth) and convenience. If they had an alternative offering "much better service, selection, product knowledge and comparable prices", those alternatives would be thriving. In fact, around here, the stores run out of business were the home improvement centers (names long since forgotten) that the Borg beat in each of those categories. There has been some turnover in traditional hardware stores, and no new ones opening. But they are not all disappearing.
Well, personally I think the major problem isn't w/ the bureaus so much as the credit card companys that use the credit reports to manipulate their rates in favorable (to them) manners. While it is true that there may be increased risk, most of these increases are far beyond what would be required and are simply usurious. The key to observing this is to see the number of unsolicited cards particularly to those w/ poor credit history.
While I'll agree it is the ultimate responsibility of the person accepting credit to ensure they're not ripped off, many of the card companies are highly culpable in enticement and entrapment, imo, preying on uneducated and disadvantaged and elderly. I'd be for much stronger usury rules, personally.
To a point, I agree with your observation about the mentality towards big companies here. Sometimes this place looks like most of the folks are an angry lot who simply resent anything and anyone more successful than them.
All large companies today have "databases", though that is not really a meaningful term. More properly, they all have some amount of deep knowldege about their customer base.
These days your identity is so widely distributed that you no longer have any control at all over it. You can be as diligent as possible to protect your personal information and it won't matter one hoot. Everything there is to know about you is available and for sale. Your health records, your financial records, your internet habits, you name it. The safeguards that surround information as sensitive as this are almost non-existent. They're in place to protect against honest people, but there really is not much in place to protect against the clever mind of the criminal, as evidenced by the recent news.
I pulled a copy of the Appellate court's opinion and read it, and the fact is I think we all have to understand that consumer credit is handed out blithely by retail big box outfits like HD, which subcontract the credit extension and approval process to folks like GE Capital (as in this case) to manage the credit process. HD outsourced and promptly forgot about the process, and forwarded everything over to GE to handle, 'cept in this case the lawsuit fell into some fine print in the GE contract which likely said "this is your issue, HD." So it got lost in the shuffle, little guy gets a judgment, and the "cost" is not really one of lawsuit defense, but one of "outsourcing" to people who don't give a sh*t about the HD customer, e.g., GE Capital (who IMHO are some of the slickest characters out there and cut really sharp, perhaps too sharp, business deals). If its not in the contract, GE doesn't do it and doesn't tell you they aren't doing it. So the long and the short of it is that the guy at HD who outsourced this function then "forgot" about it ("Hey, GE will take care of it, not to worry") is the guy who should be fired, and yes, they are lucky this was not filed as a class action. Its a bigger problem of granting credit too freely, and not paying attention to your business once its outsourced, and HD is paying the price for poor management, simple as that.
Punitive damages are one of the most ridiculous things in our legal system. They are intended to function as a fine, forcing a change in behavior, but they have become nothing more than another enriching option for the lawyers. I would suggest that punitive damages be treated like fines are - they go into the public coffers and the lawyers and plaintiffs don't get any of it. I think you would see a lot smarter settlements on lawsuits in that case. It would also make sense to tie punitive damages to performance - if they put certain procedures in place they are off the hook for the punitive damages, since the ostensible goal of them was to create a change in behavior.
And because of an expensive settlement and PUBLIC EMBARASSMENT, maybe they will get off their lazy asses and do something to correct problems like this.
They certainly have no incentive to do so otherwise.
You'd think so. I used to. Assuming as I do that jealousy is NOT your motivation to object, the obvious objection is that the possibility of large punitives may encourage more suits than are 'necessary'.
The obvious solution is to not grant large punitives when they are not necessary and indeed, juries and judges tend not to grant grant large punitives unless the plaintiff shows that the defendant has been ignoring previous smaller judgements. Some lawyers call this the 'every dog gets one bite' principle.
The cases you hear about in the news that sound absurd usually sound that way because they are being misreported, or if they really are absued, because they are exceptional, not what ord- inarily happens.
The problem with alternatives to punitives other than monetary awards to the plaintiff is that they inevitable benifit others who
1) typically have done nothing at all to earn the benefit, at least the plaintiff did the work necessary to obtain the judgement. In the instant case this would be HD's competitors.
and
2) by realizing a benefit now have a motive to encourage or facilitate such suits. This is potentially a problem if the beneficiary of the punitives is, for example, the government. As you will recall there was a time when property was confiscated from convicted witches. That property went the king. Since the king was just we may be assured that only persons who really were witches were convicted, right?
Finally, a settlement may entail the defendant being ordered to do something, in addition to just paying the plaintiff. This is particularly in the settlement of the much maligned class-action lawsuits.
I don't want to get into a pissing contest here about who said what...But please see my comments made in reply.
My shopping elsewhere comment is a response to a post by Lee Michaels. It was NOT a comment on the original poster!
I understand your point. Home Depot's credit inquiries were a routine business activity.
Again, I ask you re-read a previous post of mine. I made the point that the LA Times newspaper article fails to identify who at Home Depot (Borg) the plaintiff talked to. Neither is there any mention of a Better Business Bureau contact or involvement. Nor is there record of any police department involvement at any location. My position is/was Home Depot may have been a factor in the problem. They may have been the whole problem. However, with the lack of information in the Times article, there is not sufficient information for a reasonable person to state the Borg screwed up. (The track record of jury awards in this country does not impress me.) Folks are very quick to verbally tar and feather the Borg. I apologize if my response to Mr. Michaels led you to believe I was responding to the original poster
I used to think that too. Then it was pointed out to me that if the government is deriving revenue from punitives the government has a strong financial motive to make it easier to obtain punitives.
Also, injunctive relief, IS pretty common, especially in class-action lawsuits.
In some cases criminal charges are dropped in exchange for an agreement to not contest the forfeiture. The distinction between this and granting a license to break the law is somewhat difficult to articulate.
I disagree about it being "just a write-off to the balance sheet." The money lost is a real cash outflow. While they expect losses, the fewer they have, the better off they are. More cash and more profits. Plus, in a competitive environment they can either reduce fees and attract more customers and make even more profits or keep fees in line with their competitors (who experience higher loss rates) and make even more profits. Either way, there is an incentive for companies that grant credit to consumers to reduce losses.
The problem is that the losses are the result of companies such as home depot who somehow seem to be able to offer credit but don't have to pay the price of their own carelessness.
Believe me I have much venom for the ID thieves. But why don't you tell me who they are and where to find them. They use your name and SS# to open an account and provide a bogus billing address. The closest you might come to finding them is the state in which they live. Those cell phone stands are in every mall in the country. Just apply and 5 minutes after running *your* name and SS# through a clearing house, the thief walks away with a new phone and service.
If they cared about theft then they'd put in the software and personel to protect their profits. (I believe they already have extensive capabilities, they just have so many "reps" selling their products that they accept the theft as a fact of doing business.)
I couldn't care less if any of the big box stores existed. I rarely go to any of them and frankly can find the same or better products and service elsewhere.
Did you attend public school? College? Ever go to a doctor or dentist? Do you carry health insurance? Ever applied for utility service? Got a driver's license? Do you have a credit report?
If you answered yes to any single question above then you are at risk for ID theft. All it takes is for one dishonest employee at any of these record holders to sell your info to those just waiting in the wings. You know those college students working in the registrar's office... do you think it could be possible one of them might need a little crack money? You have zero control of the info out there. All you can do is regularly pull credit reports to try to stop anything before it gets too far along.
Oh, yes, you heard about the company last week that mistakenly put out thousands upon thousands of inividuals' information for all to see? Maybe your's is one of them... if that's the case I expect you to bend over to receive your kick in the butt.
Restitution for loss is always valid and obviously should remain unchanged. The subject of my comments was punitive damages, which are unrelated to any real loss but are directly tied to the amount of cash the defendant has.
Which differers in no major way from the situation now where lawyers benefit from the results of laws that are made by elected representative who are mostly lawyers.
The point has some merit, but since the cost of arguing for a punitive award would be borne by the plaintiff, but they wouldn't see any direct benefit from it, I suspect the effect would be a net positive.
I understand. but in cases such as we're speaking of here there is little or no tangible loss, yet there is indeed significant loss. What we know of as punitive damages are the only way to compensate for those losses. I agree that punitive loss seems to be tied to the depth of the offender's pockets, and to some degree that may even be appropriate since it could be argued that a certain amount of that success was likely the result of years of the same behavior that wound them up in court. I guess as I plow through this, I find that I am a believer in punitive judgments. Not as out of hand as they have gotten over the years, but certain as a matter of course. Then again, we hear about the outrageous awards that juries issue, but we don't hear as much about the reduced awards that the judges pass down.
Those are covered under what are called "non-tangible losses" or sometimes "pain and suffering". Punitive damages are the third type of award (Real loss, non-tangible loss, punitive damages). Non-tangible losses include compensation for loss of companionship, damage to reputation, mental stress, etc. Punitive losses have *nothing* to do with the plaintiff. They exist as *punishment* for wrongdoing (and in some circles are seen as an illegal exercise of the right of the state to punish wrongdoers).
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