Kirkus Review
Veteran investigative reporter Johnston reveals how businesses, with the consent of government agencies, rip off consumers in plain sight. This book completes a kind of trilogy, after 2003's Perfectly Legal (about tax scams) and 2007's Free Lunch (about government subsidies). The "fine print" refers to a variety of bills--telephone, electric, water, insurance, credit card, hospital--and other documents that technically disclose costs to the bill payers but are intended to obscure as many hidden costs as possible. Although Johnston's research is meant to shame the powerful for accumulating eye-popping wealth by exploiting the less fortunate, the book also serves to empower recipients of the bills so they can demand repayment and maybe even systemic reform. In a closing chapter, Johnston recommends self-education by consumers, and he provides a start by delineating, for example, how to analyze a utility bill in order to fully understand the many clever surcharges and fees. The author hopes to encourage organized campaigns aimed at all levels and branches of government. The influence of the ballot box can speak truth to power, Johnston believes--perhaps naively but with heartwarming passion. Minimum-wage laws once seemed hopeless to achieve, he writes, yet they are now prevalent because consumers banded together effectively. Investigative journalism at its best, as Johnston seeks to comfort the afflicted while afflicting the comfortable.]] Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Choice Review
According to this well-known reporter, CEOs spend most of their waking hours figuring out how to take advantage of their customers. Or, as the book's subtitle has it, "How Big Companies Use 'Plain English' to Rob You Blind." And in this goal they get an assist from free markets that are not free and government regulators who can be counted on to keep them rigged. Chapter titles--25 more or less stand-alone case studies, with so-so endnotes--include "Jacking Up Prices," "Fee Fatigue," "Please Die Soon," and "How We Beat the Garbage Gougers and Their Stinking High Prices." Not exactly Hemingway or Bellow. Johnston (Free Lunch, CH, Jun'08, 45-5680) goes after utilities, the banking and insurance industries, and other retail sectors. For good measure, he also blames rising income inequality on these bad guys. In a nation of 315 million people and 30 million businesses, the law of large numbers guarantees that one can find 50 cases of anything. While bashing corporations is low-hanging fruit in political campaigns, one would expect more from allegedly objective journalism. Summing Up: Not recommended. A. R. Sanderson University of Chicago
