Catch of the Day: Rafe blows a gasket
This Catch of the Day column was sent to Red Herring readers on October 25, 1999.
Buy this, buy that. Spend, spend, spend. Yesterday something in me flipped, and I found myself quite upset that so much of the Web is built around rampant consumerism, around the ideal that if people can buy more stuff online, they should.
A recent conversation with a sales director didn’t help. His business had an extremely good year, and it’s made his salespeople rich. His response: to encourage the salespeople to leverage themselves, to buy houses and expensive vacations. His reasoning: when the economy turns, they’ll have to work that much harder to make the payments.
This is sick. Our economy is leveraged enough. Extending this to extravagant personal loans or excess luxuries won’t make anybody happier — and will mostly likely backfire. What’s wrong with the microwave you already have?
There, I feel better now. And at least there are some companies that are helping people take better advantage of the stuff they already own. For example, Warrantynow is tapping into the extended warranty and purchase protection market. And I just got a tip about Ugripe.com, a new site that is attempting to change corporate behavior by channeling consumer complaints. It’s a start.
