Nearly four out of five Americans encountered a service or product problem last year, and about two-thirds of them felt genuine rage about it. The anger isn't fleeting frustration or minor annoyance. It's a mounting sense of powerlessness against an economic system that feels deliberately stacked against ordinary people.
Lisa, a 60-year-old marketing executive in Washington DC, lived through the reality in just 48 hours. Her longtime veterinarian, now part of a national chain, overcharged her $500 for her dog's teeth cleaning and refused to honor a promised refund. Two days later, a coupon she'd loaded onto her supermarket's app failed to apply at checkout, costing her $30 and an extra trip back to the store. Then her health insurance company rejected her son's $1,100 dental bill despite assurances it would be half-covered. "It's like Whac-a-Mole," she said. "You finish one and up pops another one."
She's not alone in feeling like the system is rigged. Sally Greenberg, executive director of the National Consumers League, calls it "a tsunami of fees and hidden charges and tricks and traps." US households are losing an estimated $165 billion annually to what researchers call the "annoyance economy," the time and money consumed fighting billing errors, navigating customer service mazes, and dealing with overcharges that mysteriously always favor the company.
The causes run deep and interconnected. Company consolidation has eliminated competitors. Regulatory rollbacks have defanged watchdog agencies. Tech-enabled cost cutting lets firms automate away service quality. Private equity takeovers prioritize extraction over experience. And a decade of court rulings has systematically stripped consumers of their legal remedies. The machinery of corporate power has never been more efficient at shifting costs and risks onto customers.
What makes this moment different is that ordinary people now recognize the system is working against them. Peter Fader, a marketing professor at the Wharton School, notes a painful paradox: Americans have more choices and higher expectations than ever before due to innovations like on-demand delivery and streaming services. But "not only does service just suck," he said, "consumers are starting to realize that a lot of the cool data and technology is being used against them."
The reaction to the killing of United Healthcare CEO Brian Thompson exposed how raw these feelings have become. Scott Broetzmann, who conducts the consumer rage survey with Arizona State University, noted that while people were horrified by the violence, there was also "a very mainstream outpouring of hostility at health insurers." That wasn't an endorsement of murder. It was a window into a "dangerous mix of brittle systems, high stakes, and very low trust."
For years, federal agencies provided a counterweight. The Consumer Finance Protection Bureau, created after the 2008 financial crisis, had returned $21 billion to consumers harmed by corporate misconduct. In late 2023, for instance, it ordered Toyota Motor Credit to pay $60 million after dealers sold thousands of customers unwanted insurance. The lender had instructed complaint staff to refuse cancellations unless customers asked three times, then directed them to write letters instead. The CFPB found the company had "withheld refunds, and knowingly tarnished credit reports with false data."
That era is ending. When Russell Vought became acting CFPB head, he terminated the Toyota payout agreement as part of sweeping changes that have gutted the agency. By October 2025, he had dismissed or rolled back 42 agreements with companies the CFPB said had ripped off consumers, according to calculations by Protect Borrowers, a group of former CFPB officials. "What does that say to companies?" Greenberg asked. "It says go ahead, rip off, lie, cheat and if you do there will be no consequences."
The Federal Trade Commission under consumer protection chief Chris Mufarrige remains active, recently forcing Instacart to pay $60 million over practices that raised grocery prices and cracking down on Meta's Facebook and Instagram for spreading online scams. Some states, including California and New York, are stepping up with their own enforcement actions and legislation. But overall, the trend is clear: federal consumer protection budgets are being slashed, experienced officials are being fired, and bedrock policies that allowed enforcement are being rescinded.
This rollback accelerated after Trump's re-election. "It has turned from a trot into a galop," Greenberg said. The pattern mirrors a broader historical arc. After consumer advocate Ralph Nader transformed the regulatory landscape in the 1960s and 1970s, a "tremendously powerful conservative pushback" in the 1980s and 1990s labeled consumer activists as busybodies who raised prices and stifled freedom, according to Lawrence Glickman, a Cornell University historian. Corporate power has been essentially unchecked ever since.
Ralph Nader himself, now 92, sees little hope. "The outlook for consumers has never been worse," he said in an interview. "Corporate power supremacy is staggeringly greater than 1970." Consumer groups have become complacent, he argued, and consumer power has never been weaker.
Congress isn't expected to help anytime soon. "Regulations and lobbying to fix consumer law, that's pretty much a useless premise at this moment," said Ira Rheingold, executive director of the National Association of Consumer Advocates. Instead, he predicted a new wave of civil litigation as law firms representing consumers report their "phones are ringing off the hook, because the federal government has abdicated its responsibility."
Another traditional watchdog, mainstream journalism, has also lost its bite. In 1970, at least 50 regional US newspapers had dedicated consumer rights reporters. Now that capacity has nearly vanished. Since 2000, close to 3,500 local newspapers have shut down entirely. Those remaining have been cut so severely that many don't even have a business section, let alone a consumer reporter. Jane Sasseen, a veteran business editor and director of the McGraw Center for Business Journalism, said the reality is stark: "Their staffs have been cut so far to the bone many of them don't even have a business section any more."
Some investigative outlets have filled gaps. Consumer Reports pushed Instacart to abandon algorithmic grocery pricing after investigations with partners like More Perfect Union. ProPublica has examined exploitative drug pricing in life-saving medications. But these efforts are scattered and cannot replicate the systematic accountability that once came from hundreds of local reporters with beats dedicated to corporate wrongdoing.
Author James Rodriguez: "The system isn't just broken, it's been deliberately dismantled, and we're watching the consequences play out in real time as citizens lose faith in both corporations and government to protect them."
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