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Comment by tcbawo | Hacker News Reader

This also applies to several other competitive industries with asymmetric information — auto repair, plumbing, and HVAC come to mind. Consumers have to place their trust in someone. It always pays to be an informed consumer. Sometimes, I guess you have to pick and choose your battles.

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Don't get me started on HVAC and plumbing. Two things that save me is I'm cheap and I don't mind a bit of suffering. My HVAC went out a couple of months ago. I diagnosed it like I would any other problem and settled on the blower fan probably went out. I call a place and guy comes out. He tested it and sure enough, broken fan. Now we get on the phone with his boss - they could do a new system on Monday (it was Friday) for $12-$13k or replace the fan next Friday because it would have to be ordered and would cost $1200. And to top it off, the guy on the phone said they needed to know now for their schedule.

First off I'm stubborn so pushing me is going to get them nowhere. Second, no way a standard Carrier fan was going to take a week. HVACs are made to be modular. Called my neighbor who is in the trades and has wholesale accounts all around town. Found a fan for $250, and swapped it out. Gave my neighbor a gift certificate to a nice restaurant in town as thanks for the help. If the original guy hadn't tried to push me, I would have happily paid the $1200. But, he made it so unreasonable I was like f'that. I'll go buy a window unit for the bedroom if I have to.

I had a similar thing happen with my hot water heater a few years ago. Offered a ~$4k to replace. I call around find one better than the existing one for $1100 and drop it in in all of 30 minutes. If the guy had said $2k I would have said yes on the spot.

I can only think that there are so many people who have zero clue about fixing things nowadays that they get fleeced.

Part of the problem is that in the US, everything cost about 2x+ as much as you would think and the reason why is taxes. Being self-employed means you pay almost 40% of all earnings in taxes. When I hear a quote, I take ~10% and estimate that's the cost of the parts and I can fix it myself. One problem with this though is that some thing require specialized tools to fix. Unless you can borrower them, it's not worth buying them for a one off repair.

Government taxes are at least just a multiple. Private taxes (aka insurance) is a huge fixed sum overhead every year, regardless of how many customers someone has. This keeps new entrants out of the market, and makes small time operations to close up shop. From what I understand those rates have been skyrocketing lately, but nobody is really talking about it except out of very some narrow contexts like consumer facing house+auto insurance. I suspect frustration with this is a big part driving support for the populist reactionary movement to rip down society, despite it being set to make the problem even worse.

This is why the consequences of dishonesty in such asymmetric dynamics need to be not just major, but stunningly, shockingly severe; e.g., seizure of all assets, including homes and anything that would otherwise be protected to totally impoverish them and bar them from any professional position for life. These types of relationships are the bullseye for deterrence through sever punishment; they are deliberative offenses against society, they has severe and compounding impacts, and they are a severe abuse of trust and asymmetric information.

That should also be backed up by a bounty program that allows whistleblowers to get some significant portion of the seized assets.

Isn’t this type of dishonesty especially ambiguous and difficult to prove? There are extreme cases, but also a broad range of opinion in which professionals routinely disagree.

The higher the stakes, the more ambiguous the problem: I’m reminded of lawyering. How do we know if a defense lawyer is “bad” or “dishonest”? If we look at their conviction ratio, then we might just be punishing the ones who tend to work the more hopeless cases—and a good lawyer is correct to behave as if even guilty people deserve a full defense. If we ask the customer/defendants, pretty much anybody who loses will loudly explain how they’re innocent and would have gotten off if it weren’t for that bad lawyer they had.

The dentist who treats aggressively will explain how the “wait-and-see” dentist is neglecting problems, and the “wait-and-see” dentist will explain, like the tech people commenting here, that the aggressive dentists are doing stuff that’s unnecessary (or not necessary yet).

I, a person who pays for my own dental care, will continue to prefer and seek out a conservative approach to treatment; an acquaintance of mine, who has dental insurance but gets it from a startup job that could evaporate tomorrow, will prefer to gather his implants while he may. Which of our dentists should be ruined for life, “stunningly, shockingly,” and permanently crippled?

This is the type of thing that a public review/reputation system tends to flesh out. But, we have seen this fail over and over as the system gets gamed or abused. Any industry where consumers buy less frequently than once every few months, these systems are awful. Different people have different situations and it might take a long time before someone even realizes they’ve been ripped off.

I agree 10000%. Go after the mechanics who scam grandmas. Go after car sales people who scam new soldiers. Stop giving who industries a license to dismember like dentists get.

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