Consumer Action Taskforce:Inclusion guidelines

The line between systematic abuse of customers and an unlucky streak of bad customer experiences is blurry, and can be particularly hard to find for a user who’s just been on the receiving end of bad service. The following guidelines should help you determine whether a particular incident is appropriate for inclusion on the Wiki.

What makes something appropriate to record within the Wiki?

An incident is to be included in the Wiki when one or both of the following is true:

• It fits into the niche of "new" consumer protection - e.g., revocation of rights of ownership, or widespread changes of the terms of the sale. If it is only possible because of these new mechanisms of consumer abuse, then it can be included here. A story relating to a single customer, or a small handful of customers, only rises to the level of being included here if it is relevant to "modern" consumer protection.  Even if it only affected a single customer, the very fact that these things can happen in the first place means that they need to be documented.
• It is a large-scale consumer abuse. An old-style consumer protection story only belongs here if it is a systemic practice that is happening to a large group of people. For example, consider how Intel denied customer warranty replacements for its 14th generation CPUs. This practice, even if it is an "old" style anti-consumer practice (selling a defective product, and ignoring warranties en masse), is something that is systemic & widespread, beyond an individual anecdotal experience. Another relevant example is Asus' warranty policies here.

See the description at the beginning of the Mission Statement to learn what is meant by "new" and "old" consumer issues.

A practice does not belong here if it belongs in a Yelp review:

Louis had a bad experience with a bad technician, salesman, and service writer at Caliber Collision. They lied on timeframes, and they did a poor job of installing new parts on his car. This, however, is not to be included in the Wiki.

Instead, this is an issue to be settled elsewhere, by contacting the local consumer protection/licensing bureau (for instance, Department of Consumer Affairs in New York City), and by providing feedback on Yelp or Google.

1. This does not fit any of the categories above of removing privacy, rights of ownership, taking away the right to repair, or forcing anyone into a terms of service agreement in a sneaky way.
2. There is no evidence that what they did is systemically pushed onto all customers.

Hyper-local, run-of-the-mill issues do not belong here.

A plumber who repeatedly ghosts work, disappears & sets up a new company when people go looking for a refund is not worthy of report here. The story of Eugene the contractor belongs on a personal blog, Yelp, and Google. Reports on his behavior should be made to local, city, state, and federal authorities where they apply. A contractor who sets up a new company any time someone looks for a refund after being ripped off may be an anti-consumer scammer, and it may well be that knowing about him would prevent future people from getting scammed. However, this is simply too small and local to warrant inclusion in a Wiki whose purpose is specifically to inform consumers about the modern landscape of consumer protection issues.

For information on the types of articles the Wiki is expected to contain, please see our Article Types page. For a quick guide on what you can do to help, please see our How to help guide!