Pack4ever's Blog

So I rarely think about slamming businesses for what they do, cause I'm a Buyer-Beware kind of guy.. But I just have to sound off about this because it affected people I know..

As you may know, our TV signals are switching to digital from the current analog next year. In anticipation, the Government (FCC) and the Consumer Electronics trade association agreed a few years back to start labeling analog TV'ss with a warning that digital was coming and the TV's would no longer be useful after Feb, 2009.  The labeling rule was designed to protect consumers from unsavory electronics shops who would sell the outdated TV sets to unsuspecting consumers..

And that is exactly what happened anyway. You see the big boys like Best Buy decided to ignore the labeling rules and sold tons of soon to be useless anaolg only TV sets without a warning or mention of the digital change coming. Consumers spent hard earned money and became outraged when friends explained the issue. Of course the stores refused to take the TV's back and the consumer was screwed..

http://www.broadcastingcable.com/article/CA6561130.
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Then the FCC decides to spank the bad boys for ripping off the public. Best Buy got a whopping $288,000 fine which they are refusing to pay. (this probably amounts to less than a fraction of the profits they made selling useless TV's to unsuspecting consumers). They claim the FCC had no right in the first place to stop them from misleading the public and selling outdated TV sets.. The arguments are all very legal but basically says Best Buy can rip people off and nobody has the right to stop them. They didn't say oops, we made a mistake, or even we're sorry. They basically said  something akin to we chose to ignore the ruling, rip off our customers, and we defy the government's authority to do anything about it.

A few months ago I saw some congressional hearings on digital TV on CSpan. Seems that the digital converter boxes the giant retailers (including best Buy) are selling actually block local stations who are still analog, again screwing the consumer who gets home and wonders why thier favorite station is not available anymore. The big retailers refuse to take the converters back, and also refuse to sell the correct models until they are sold out of the bad converters. Again, they are selling the consumers bad junk just to make a buck and they'll sell the right equipment as soon as they have sold the last piece of junk.

What a world. Remember what happened to the guy in China who sold the bad pet food. They hung him in public. Maybe China has some good ideas after all.