What’s this all about?
Australia’s consumers are bombarded with confusing messages and a barrage of products and services. In most categories, companies go out of their way to prevent direct comparisons between their products and those of their competitors. Anyone who’s tried to compare private health insurance of mobile phone plans has seen this in action. They do this because they don’t really want competition.
This blog is about some of the information deficits confronting consumers, how companies manipulate the facts, and the hilarity of them trying to lie without technically lying, otherwise known as fine print.
My aim is to demonstrate the problems consumers face, and discuss some ideas I have to help consumers make decisions. Some ideas require government intervention, and the Fuel Watch and Grocery Choice debacles demonstrate how easily governments roll over when confronted by powerful big business lobbies unless there is widespread support for what they’re doing.
Many of the competition problems in Australia can be solved by improving the information available to consumers and facilitating meaningful comparisons between different products and suppliers. This blog will attempt to demonstrate how we can make this happen.
Who am I? I’m Simon Rumble, an Australian web guy. I do web production, copy writing, marketing and integration.
