In the game of 99 Schemes, your wits must be keen, For lurking around every corner, a trick you'll have seen. Price gouging and shrinkflation, they'll try to shrink your pay, Greedflation's a monster, feasting on your holiday.
Brands tempt with empty hype, cable TV is ever dear, Subscriptions pile up, drowning you in fear. Movie snacks, a salty tax, warranties, a lie, Discounts wink, a siren's song, before they make you cry.
But fear not, brave player, for knowledge is your shield, Unmask the dastardly schemes, their secrets revealed. With wit and a chuckle, expose their sly design, Leave them floundering, their profits left behind.
Embark on the treacherous path of "99 Schemes," a board game where every square is a potential pitfall into the depths of profiteering trickery. Navigate through the labyrinth of pandemic price gouging and shrinkflation, dodge the specters of greedflation and tipflation. Each tile brings you face-to-face with a new scheme. Airline junk fees, emergency room exorbitances, and the mirage of loyalty programs await to test your mettle. Armed with wit and caution, players must sidestep the snares of pandemic profiteering and subscription inflation, all while battling the ultimate challenge: the unsustainable wealth transfer designed to drain money from the many to the few. Can you make it through the gauntlet of schemes unscathed, or will you fall victim to dastardly deeds? Join the game, if you dare.
Once mildly amused by daily profiteering schemes, I now find myself deeply troubled by their pervasive scale and audacity. These schemes range from moderately intrusive to nefarious, diabolical, and sometimes inescapable - igniting widespread frustration and outrage. Together, let's redraw the battle lines.
I'm sounding the alarm on specific daily business schemes, scams, and shenanigans that fuel our frustration. Picture a world where, armed with insight and wit, we band together to challenge the corporate behemoths and their intelligently crafted schemes. From the dark arts of "schemeflation" to the sly "shrinkflation," we're up against a legion of clever tricksters, turning data science and market research into a weapon against our wallets.
Fear not, we've become adept at dodging the most obvious forms of financial treachery. Driven by a greed and ambition that knows no bounds it's as if someone has opened ‘schools of the dark arts’, churning out masters of manipulation by the hundreds.
In a world where "flations" run rampant, from schemeflation to scamflation, we're seeing an inflation of schemes. It's a carnival of capitalist creativity where the prizes are bloated piñatas stuffed with profits, dividend increases, and stock buybacks.
Schemeflation elevates prices, increases markups over costs, expands net-profits and share prices without adding incremental value for the consumer or the corporation’s long-term shareholder value. These include - pandemic price gouging, greedflation, scandalous airline pricing trickery, planned digital services inflation for broadband internet, cable and satellite TV, cellular plans, credit card program schemes, fake hotel parking and resort fees, doubling and tripling of concert and professional sporting event prices, a plethora of software applications subscriptions that prior were lifetime purchases, streaming video bifurcation and relentless price hikes for serving up stale content that used to be unsaleable, inkflation for your printer - all the “flations” you can imagine.
We've become unwitting volunteers in a new self-service economy, juggling tasks that were once part of a service we paid for. At the premium high-priced grocery store, I am an unpaid part-time employee - expert in unloading the shopping cart, operating the self-checkout register, paying for flimsy plastic bags, and bagging my own groceries on a tiny scale. Executive leadership and shareholders, love me for paying pandemic hangover pricing and physically laboring through the checkout to help maximize their operating profits.
Fast food chain pricing is moving up market towards casual fast dining while ambitiously doubling down on the self-service gambit. They are nearing a milestone - doubling the average ticket while coercing me into placing my own order at the kiosk, serving up drinks, acting as a food runner, bussing my own table, keeping the restroom clean, all while coyly suggesting a tip to offset living wages for the invisible hands behind the scene. I’m told, McDonald’s is testing new store concepts with no cash register stations to prevent customers insisting on services they are rescinding. If this is the new norm, then surely, a 20% discount, profit sharing, and chance to earn some stock shares for using the loyalty app is in order, right?
Imagine a world where free market capitalism isn't a gladiator arena, where corporations don't aim to vacuum every penny from consumers' pockets. This zero-sum game, where one's feast is another's famine, has turned customer loss into corporate gain, painting a picture of a win-lose battlefield rather than a fair exchange. It's high time we rewrite the rules, shifting from a battleground to a more balanced scale, ensuring that when corporations win, consumers don't have to lose.
We are gathering our collective consumer might, not for a battle, but for a ballet of strategic pressure against those who've forgotten the art of fair play. In this digital age, our unified voice can be swift and sweeping, encouraging those who've strayed to reconsider the merit of creating genuine and enduring consumer value over quick gains.
Asking questions, gathering facts and feedback, assessing consumer sentiment
Loyal customers should never have to be compelled to band together in collective action. Our initial endeavor will serve as a testbed to create and refine a strategy for future actions.
Asking questions - When a series of dubious corporate moves and business schemes seems to warrant it, I intend to consult with my subscribers and social media following to determine if the issue is significant enough to consider a large-scale campaign seeking financial justice
Gather the facts - I will undertake an initial review to establish if the sentiment is based in facts. It's essential to ensure we do not wrongly accuse a well-regarded brand of unfriendly anti-consumer business tactics. Expect me to pose probing questions and address issues brands may wish remain unspoken.
Collecting feedback and assessing consumer sentiment - To dismantle an inappropriate but highly lucrative business scheme, massive support is required. With some corporate behemoths, a few thousand dissenting voices are expected and factored into their risk calculations. Black-hat data science models and sly focus groups seek to understand the extent to which profits clearly outweigh a minority of consumers perceptibly balking at the change. Hundreds of thousands of voices will have their attention - millions of voices flexing their collective purchasing power makes it possible to impose change.
Your Dedicated Campaign Coordinator
In addition to providing in depth research, piercing analysis, and strategic vision I am offering my services to the readership as an expert Program Manager representing the collective will of those ready to challenge the status quo. To the extent there is enough support to responsibly press forward I will orchestrate group initiatives, guiding multiple campaigns to highlight questionable practices and influence corporations to prioritize ethical profitability. We aim to foster a commercial environment where enduring trust and reciprocal respect drive success, not merely fleeting financial triumphs.
Enabled by the power of Substack and the unity of purpose, we're not just on the defense anymore. We're rallying to dismantle these schemes, one calculated crowd scale campaign at a time. It's time to turn the tables, to claw back what's ours and show the largest corporations their days of trolling consumers with unchecked corporate power, avarice and ambition are numbered. We're not their adversaries; we're the lifeblood of their business.
As your personal Program Manager in campaign crusades for fairness, I am a fully committed consumer advocate. We are pioneering a movement to realign our beloved brands with true north. Together, we'll champion a marketplace where profits are the fruit of integrity, not the spoils of battle - where profits are earned by valuing customers, employees, communities, and shareholders alike.
As we navigate through the maze of modern commerce, where every turn introduces a new "flation" to our vocabulary, every game board tile an obstacle to dodge or an annoyance to swat away - it's clear the only way forward is together. By harnessing the power of social media and our collective purchasing clout, we can tackle these 99 Schemes head-on. Join me in founding a movement to dismantle these schemes one by one.
Did Netflix lose its way in the Pandemic?
Netflix's pandemic journey raises questions: Is it veering off course, perhaps seduced by the allure of easy profits from a loyal audience in a declared state of national emergency? Stewarding a beloved brand through a pandemic isn’t about pushing the limits on price hikes in an attempt to triple profits, not can it be about filling screens with subpar, and now ad-filled shows. Instead, the focus should have been on creating enduring enterprise value by taking extraordinary measures to satisfy consumers desire for high-quality content as a respite from the ravages of the pandemic. The willingness of audiences and investors to support a brand that delivers binge-worthy excellence is undeniable. However, there's a looming question: emerging from the pandemic — will short-term exploitative pandemic strategies risk inciting a consumer revolt, exposing cracks in the foundation Netflix stands on?
Do the concepts and topics resonate deeply with you as true? Each blog post serves as a virtual focus group. Your feedback is essential. After reading each article, leave feedback that will help shape the discussion, strategy, and tactics going forward.
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This GoFundMe is for everyone impacted by pandemic price-gouging, the inflation crisis; and excessive interest rate hikes targeting consumers without addressing the share of inflation attributed to corporate greedflation.
At very large scale - we are a formidable force for change
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99 Schemes - Introduction