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Comment by manquer | Hacker News Reader

Do individuals have standing against FTC if they don't action ?

Lack of FTC action is causing you material harm , or is there immunity against FTC as well?

Anecdotal, but the FTC has teeth.

I noticed I was getting billed by AT&T for South Carolina taxes when I'd been living in Oregon for 3 years. Literally hadn't left the state of Oregon since I'd arrived.

I added up the fees in a spreadsheet and it came out to $51. I called AT&T and fought with their customer support who offered me "as a one time courtesy refund $25" and escalating to a manager wouldn't change that.

I submitted a complaint to the FTC, and not long after I got multiple calls and voicemails from AT&T "Executive Customer Service" or something, and when I finally took the call they breathlessly offered me a full refund for the exact amount right up front with no haggling.

It was remarkable.

Can you believe they called ME to fix their fuckup? And then paid me?

Could you imagine if that was the level of customer service you always got?

So out of sheer loyalty I immediately switched to Ting and have saved thousands of dollars since.

I was once having problem with my Bank, and instead of going into the branch _again_, I used a form on the website to log a complaint. OMG, I've never seen such good customer service!

My guess is the number of complaints resolved is tied to somebodies bonus.

It may be that complaints submitted over the bank website are handled by a different (more responsive) team than complaints made at the branch.

A lot of times, when it comes to business like this, in person complaints go into the ether, but the online complaints are recorded and play a part in performance metrics, or hit corp response team rather than branch.

This is it. Online complaints will go into a system where they are monitored by (very) senior management and reported to regulators.

Now if only Google had a similar complaint form.

> Do individuals have standing against FTC if they don't action ?

You can petition them, certainly. Individuals and business are not able to sue the FTC.

It's complicated, but under certain circumstances you can sue agencies for not doing something. It depends on the specific laws governing the specific agency and how you've been harmed by the inaction. Broadly speaking, the Administrative Procedures Act required agencies to have procedurally fair processes. If you're concretely harmed by an agency's inaction and you can show they didn't follow the correct processes, you can sometimes win.

Why can't you sue the FTC?

Anybody can sue anybody. Winning though...

In general you can't sue the federal government.

On the contrary, that's what judicial review is for. (And there may be other mechanisms as well.)

The general rule of US and English common law is that the sovereign is immune from liability. The reason you can sue the U.S. Government is because Congress passed laws such as the Tucker Act, the Federal Tort Claims Act, the Administrative Procedures Act, and Section 1983 of the Civil Rights Act allowing plaintiffs to do so.

Judicial review doesn't generally let you sue the Government to obtain redress for injuries; it is for enforcing the people's Constitutional rights where the Government is stepping out of bounds. It doesn't let you, say, sue the FTC to get them to do their job.

(This is second-year Constitutional Law, BTW.)

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