>> write legal letters to scare businesses out of overcharging you
This one actually concerns me a little. A lot of businesses use legalese to scare and overwhelm you, so it's great to have something to fight back. But there are also a lot of people out there who just game the system as consumers too - I'm a little concerned for Mom & Pop shops who will just end up being the victims here instead. Ultimately I don't think there's a perfect solution to the fact that dishonest, selfish people exist.
>> they’ll think ‘this could be made public and go viral and hurt our business
This might play out in a more complicated way. I have an app that records all my calls. I stop the recording immediately if it's a personal call. If it's a business I inform them I'm recording the phone call. Much of the time, that ends the call. The business was going to record it too, but now that they know I'm going to record it, they tell me they'll have to end the call and schedule a time to call back when neither of us records it, which I refuse to do, so I take care of business in writing, often in-person instead. Instead of making my over-the-phone business more confident, it just eliminates the phone as an option.