The Raping of American Citizens: How the Consumer is Being Ripped Off

The reason I named this article "The Raping Of America" is because what is happening to the citizens is although many times legal, is very immoral. I am about to discuss two different samples in my own life where as a consumer and citizen I have been ripped off and am still being ripped off.

Let me start with Hughes net high speed Internet When we first signed up, it was a pretty good deal while it was still direcway. Then it became Hughes net and that is when the trouble started. We kept having problems and having to call them over and over again. Because of their outsourcing it is so difficult to understand the technician and get the technician to understand you. But still it was not bad except for the bandwidth.

Without going into details, all the Satelite high speed Internet has what they call a download threshold. What this is depending on the plan we have purchased from them, we are only allowed so many megabytes of download with in a certain amount of time. If we exceeds that time then we are subject to what is called the "Fair Access Policy" or FAP. In reality this is an unfair access policy.

Now here is where Hughes net is ripping me and many other customers off. At one time we were allowed 160 something megabytes every four hours with an up to 8 hour recovery time. When we exceed the amount of download allowed in the alloted time then the high speed is no longer in effect and we end up with slower then dial up performance during the recover time. If we continue downloading in excess that time is increased. Well that was not a problem for us and rarely did we ever exceed our allotted download in the alloted time.

Downloads can be anything from opening web pages, web radio, on line videos, critical or otherwise updates for your computer and its software, and even the updates from the high speed provider to your modem. That does not leave us much we can do. Specially for us who are trying to earn a little money on line to make ends meet.

We decided to go to the next higher plan with more download and was alloted 350 megabytes every four hours and that was not to bad. We could live with that. Suddenly Hughes announces they were changing their FAP and the increased our allotment to 375 megabytes, but also increased the alloted time to use that much in. It was now 375 megabytes in a 24 hour period and a 24 hour recovery time.

I have gone round and round with them and they will not budge. When I asked for the number or email address for Hughes headquarters the technicians conveniently did not have those number. Now instead of having 365 megabytes every 4 hours I did the math and we now only have 62.50 megabytes every four hours on the average.

This kind of action and lack of response or caring on the part of Hughes maybe legal but definitely immoral. I still do not understand why they have to have any kind of bandwidth limitation when cable and DSL do not. I personally believe it is just another way for big company's to rip off the consumers to put money into their own pockets.

The second example I want to present to you is about the Veterans Administration. I am not going to give figures or to much detail because I don't care to broadcast my personal finance. But rest assured I am being raped or ripped off by the VA. I am paying for their incompetent workers mistake.

I am a disabled Vet and use the VA for my medical problems. I do have a co-pay on my medicine which is really not that bad considering what others have to pay for medicine. The problem is in 1992 I was awarded a large sum of money to exit the United States Air force Early. This was called the Early Out Program. I was then awarded disability a year or so after I had been honorably discharged for the Air force and was told that since I was disabled that changed my discharge status and had to pay that whole huge sum of money back. Instead of getting disability pay they are using each months pay check to pay that off. I will get no money for being disabled from them until the whole amount is recovered including what I payed in taxes.

Hurricane Rita came through and destroyed our home forcing us to get a new home and the government did not help us at all to get into the new home. In the meantime I had applied for a waver on co-payment on my medicine. When we moved and the 9/11 people gave us our new address, I in turn gave it to the VA over and over again and they did not change the address. We did not get a bill for several months so I thought I had qualified for the co-payment. One day I get a letter from the VA with the old address still on it, stating that I owed a large amount to them in back payment. The notice also said this was the second notice. I never received the first. I live on Social Security Disability. We barely scrape by month to month and now they wanted me to pay that amount that was accumulated due to someones incompetents, by not changing my address. I told them I should not have to pay for their mistakes. Since then they have been take large chunks of money out of my SSDI every month pushing us further and further into debt. The VA turned it over to the treasury department who steals the money from me takes it cut and then sends the rest to the other thieves.

This is just two examples on how citizens and consumers are being raped by big business and the federal government. I have even contacted my congressman and they don't seem to be doing anything or can't do anything about this.