GoKawiilAmerican consumers are angry. Nearly 80% of Americans had a service or product problem in 2025, and about two-thirds of those felt “rage” about it, according to the “National Consumer Rage” survey.
Many consumers feel they are constantly fighting against an onslaught of overcharges, customer service hassles, shoddy products and billing mistakes that always seem to go in the company’s favor. All of this comes against a background of soaring prices and rising inflation.
There’s a stew of factors at work behind the rise in consumer rage: company consolidation, regulatory rollbacks, years of court decisions that limit consumer power, tech-enabled cost cuts, private equity takeovers, Covid-era business model changes, a moribund media and the rise of AI customer service, to name a few. But there is hope, too.
In the coming weeks, the Guardian plans to examine some of the causes behind this rising epidemic of consumer frustration, the impact on Americans’ lives, the watchdogs on the beat, and potential solutions. Tell us your personal tales of corporate frustration here, and we’ll explore this problem together.
The annoyance economy
Lisa, a 60-year-old marketing executive who lives in Washington DC, recently battled three big corporations over just two days. She didn’t want to give her last name for fear of retaliation from the companies involved.
First, her longtime vet, now part of a national chain, overcharged her $500 for her dog’s teeth cleaning and didn’t issue a promised refund. Then, her big box supermarket promoted a coupon on its app that wasn’t applied at the checkout, costing her $30 and a trip back to the store. Finally, her health insurance company rejected her son’s $1,100 dental bill that she had been told would be 50% covered, despite protracted haggling.
“It’s like Whac-A-Mole,” the mother of two said. “You finish one and up pops another one.”
“It feels like a war on consumers,” said Sally Greenberg, the executive director of the National Consumers League, a 125-year-old consumer advocacy group. Households are being hit by “a tsunami of fees and hidden charges and tricks and traps”, she said.
American consumers face a paradox – they have more choices and higher expectations than ever before, thanks to innovations like delivery-on-demand and streaming services, said Peter Fader, a Wharton School marketing professor. “But not only does service just suck,” Fader said, consumers “are starting to realize that a lot of the cool data and technology is being used against them”.
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