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Gotcha Capitalism: How Hidden Fees Rip You Off Every Day-and What You Can Do About It | 
| Author: Bob Sullivan
Publisher: Ballantine Books
Category: Book
List Price: $14.95
Buy New: $8.20
You Save: $6.75 (45%)
New (39) Used (16) from $7.34
Avg. Customer Rating:  27 reviews
Sales Rank: 41603
Media: Paperback
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 368
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.6
Dimensions (in): 7.9 x 5.2 x 0.9
ISBN: 0345496132
Dewey Decimal Number: 381.34
EAN: 9780345496133
ASIN: 0345496132
Publication Date: December 26, 2007
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Condition: Brand New! Ships USPS w/tracking number.
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Product Description
What is Gotcha Capitalism?
Coughing up $4 fees for ATM transactions. Iron-clad cell phone contracts you can’t get out of with a crowbar. Paying big bucks for insurance you don’t need on a rental car or forking over $20 a day for supposedly “free” wireless internet. Every day we use banks, cell phones, and credit cards. Every day we book hotels and airline tickets. And every day we get ripped off.
How? Here are just a few examples of how big business can get you:
• You didn’t fill up the rental car with gas?
Gotcha! Gas costs $7 a gallon here.
• Your bank balance fell to $999.99 for one day?
Gotcha! That’ll be $12.
• You miss one payment on that 18-month same-as-cash loan?
Gotcha! That’ll be $512 extra.
• You’re one day late on that electric bill?
Gotcha! All your credit cards now have a 29.99% interest rate.
But not for much longer. In Gotcha Capitalism, MSNBC.com’s “Red Tape Chronicles” columnist Bob Sullivan exposes the ways we’re all cheated by big business, and teaches us how to get our money back–proven strategies that can help you save more than $1,000 a year.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 22 more reviews...
 A much-needed book for our time August 3, 2008
This book is well worth having, both to read at first and then keep nearby for possible future reference. Although there is plenty of common sense advice, the information in it is enlightening, especially when it's all together as it is in this book. That, along with its guidance for how to take action, is where this book's main value lies as far as I'm concerned.
If you're already a cynic, reading this book will almost certainly fuel your fire a little more. If you're not, and think cynics are just "negative" people, perhaps reading this book will open some eyes. (I say "perhaps" because there are those who will never see reality no matter how many facts and true stories are shown to them.)
 A very enjoyable read and a good reference. July 22, 2008
This book has been a very good read but it is also quite informative. I would advise anyone to read this before they make any large commitment to anything as this will probably save you money and time from bad decisions.
Poverty by a Thousand Cuts July 18, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
This book is pretty depressing but incredibly informative, as consumer advocate Bob Sullivan gives us the dirt on all matter of fees, surcharges, and other financial shenanigans inflicted on us every day by the corporations we do business with. Sullivan offers a great amount of knowledge on how these fees operate and how much they nibble away at the average consumer's money (the amounts that retirement fund managers skim off of your nest egg are truly sickening), and also includes some tactics for dealing with intransigent customer service reps and potentially helpful consumer's rights groups. Many of Sullivan's tips for avoiding various types of sneaky fees will prove to be very helpful for the sharp-eyed consumer.
However, a few of Sullivan's tips are not too realistic or will be a struggle for average folks, such as keeping $1000 in one's checking account at all times or shopping around among disappearing or nonexistent options for credit cards and cell phones. Sullivan is also prone to conspiracy theorizing at times, especially in the chapter on student loans. Another issue is that Sullivan misses a golden opportunity to explore the idea of how sneaky fees, and the difficulties faced by average consumers in fighting them, are violations of American capitalism and democracy. He only introduces these potentially powerful political and economic arguments in fits and starts, and expanding upon them would have made the book a powerhouse.
But with those flaws aside, this book is an occasionally terrifying and always outrageous (i.e. you'll be outraged) report on the rapidly increasing ways that big corporations rip you off little by little, while systematically dismantling your ability to do anything about it. You could conceivably remove yourself from some parts of this unfair system by rejecting television or telephones, but in the modern wired and globalized financial system you're often powerless against sneaky corporate greed. While some of Sullivan's proposed solutions are a bit problematic, he definitely delivers crucial knowledge for the thinking consumer. [~doomsdayer520~]
BUY 10 - GIVE TO PEOPLE YOU LOVE July 6, 2008
Other reviews do an excellent job of encapsulating the information in this book. I would add that as a money coach and radio show host, I have given my clients this book and done two shows about it. I have reports back by several people they have been able to recapture thousands in tricky fees and rate manipulations.
In one case a credit card company convinced a client who pays off the card every month to move to a 0% interest rate card. The fine print that arrived weeks later explained this move gave the company the right to charge a high interest rate to charges she made during the previous 90 days on the old card, even though those balances were fully paid. She had a $[...] charge the next month.
Using the techniques in Gotcha, she was quickly able to reverse this and she got up the nerve to tell a supervisor "your company told me if I moved to the new card it cost me nothing. You shouldn't be allowed to do that." And the representative agreed. While I probably would have said it differently, using words like 'fraud' and 'purposeful material omission,' this moment was profoundly freeing to her.
This book should be turned into a required coarse at the collegiate level. Everyone in the class should participate in lab, where they compare what their various credit card companies, banks, and service providers are doing. And they should, as college kids do so well, rebel.
 True, frustrating but doesn't really help June 18, 2008
3 out of 3 found this review helpful
The author knows what he's talking about and he covers a lot of ground but there are several reasons not to bother buying this book. Two stars is probably too low bacause he's done his homework, it's just that reading this book can only serve to make you mad and not much else.
1. For most the Gotchas he admits that there's not much you can personally do about it except be aware.
2. The book is very specific in most parts so it already feels dated as new gotchas come along every day.
I think what the author is trying to do it great, it's just the the only real answer to these problems is a wholesale change in the consumer protection laws in the US.
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