Hacker News Reader

Comment by onion2k | Hacker News Reader

This kind of campaign would not be possible in the US because the provider can simply turn your service off with no questions asked, where from their FAQ it sounds like turning it off is heavily regulated in the UK.

That might be true, but if enough customers organise to refuse to pay the company will collapse. You can't carry on trading if you cut off some relatively large percentage of your revenue stream. There's no reason to belive customers are powerless in the US.

View on HN

It depends on the state, but that's not really true in the US, either.

I can still cut off their revenue stream (canceling my service) and fight back without stealing.

You can but that doesn't send the same message. The point is to tell the companies "We want your service but we believe the price is unreasonable." Cancelling the service fails to achieve that.

Also, this isn't stealing. It's negotiating. Withholding payment until you get what you need is a very common tactic in business. There's no reason why consumers shouldn't be able to use it too.

> Withholding payment until you get what you need is a very common tactic in business

Are you talking about negotiating a contract or breaching one you've already agreed to? If the latter, can you provide some examples of breaching a contract to negotiate new terms? That's not something I've heard before, I think.

Neither. I'm saying that common for two parties to sign a contract that agrees a payment schedule based on delivery milestones, and for one party to withhold payment because they think the other party hasn't delivered what they said they would deliver. For example, if X commissions a website from Y that says X will pay when the website is "done", X will refuse to pay Y until X thinks it's fast enough, or has a feature that Y didn't think they would have to develop, etc. The negotiation is around whether or not the terms of the contract have been fulfilled.

If you've signed up for a payment plan for £xx/month and overnight it goes up to £xx+30%/month in August, with the threat of another similar price hike in January, it could be argued that the energy companies broke the contract.

Yes, there has always been the possibility of prices rising. But there's also always been a reasonable expectation that any price rises would be in line with inflation. Not +30% twice in the space of a few months.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com