Planet Money - Planet Money complains. To learn.

Episode Date: April 30, 2025

On today's show: we're ... venting.We at Planet Money are an ensemble show – each with different curiosities and styles. But we recently realized many of us have something in common: We're annoyed consumers.So we're going to get ranty ... but then try to understand the people annoying us. Like stingy coffee shops, manufacturers that don't design things for repair ... and stores that send way to many emails every day.Along the way, we learn a very sad thing about satisfaction and the future of skilled labor in the U.S.(Also, we should all just stop using umbrellas. They have negative consumption externalities. Come on people.)This episode was produced by James Sneed. It was edited by Marianne McCune, fact-checked by Sierra Juarez, and engineered by James Willetts. Alex Goldmark is our executive producer.Find more Planet Money: Facebook / Instagram / TikTok / Our weekly Newsletter.Listen free at these links: Apple Podcasts, Spotify, the NPR app or anywhere you get podcasts.Help support Planet Money and hear our bonus episodes by subscribing to Planet Money+ in Apple Podcasts or at plus.npr.org/planetmoney.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

This is Planet Money from NPR. So, alright, I was out on maternity leave for a while and, I don't know, something about that time just made me view things in the world differently. I was questioning why everything is the way that it even is, contemplating the big questions, like why in the world do stores send me so many emails? An email a day from every store I've ever bought anything from ever? Why? Things like that, you know? So, okay, yeah, no, not the most important issues of our time, but like that little pet peeve that just like, oh, gets you every single time you open your email.

I actually really need to know how bombarding us with email like this doesn't backfire on them. Like, let's get to the bottom of this. And I was certain that other people at Planet Money also had little petty annoyances that, once we understand them, could maybe make us less bitter about it all. So I told everyone come to me with your complaints, vent to me what is annoying you in the world that I can help make sense of. And I'm just gonna say some of us really needed the catharsis. James Snead, you have a list. Sure yeah okay like driving is terrible.

There's like traffic everywhere. Nobody knows how to drive. Everything's expensive. Nothing's cheap, nothing's cheap. Mary Childs. Oh, you know, I wish that we had peace on Earth. We're not interested in the big ones. We want petty complaints.

Okay, right, sorry, sorry, sorry, sorry. Lexi Horowitz-Ghazi. What's your beef? You got some beef. Okay, my beef is... Oh, I'm so sorry, sir. We don't do free refills. And then you have to buy an entire another like three to six dollar cup of coffee. Outrageous.

Alex Goldmark, Platamany's boss boss. Yeah, it was about my microwave. Okay. Okay. The short version is my microwave broke. I'm now mad at like all appliance designers. I am sad for skilled labor in the US. Like this took me on a journey. I think I haven't gotten a single thing fixed since like 1999.

Like I think I just go like buy a new product. Okay, well here's what I'm thinking. I don't want to live in that world. I want to live in a world where we can like fix. Yes. Hello and welcome to Planet Money Complaining. I'm Sarah Gonzalez and we are complaining for the sake of learning.

We can't tackle world peace, but there was a theme to some of our complaints. We are annoyed consumers. So we are gonna try to understand the other side. The annoyers. Today on the show, why appliance companies maybe don't want us to repair things. The very sad thing about satisfaction, like customer satisfaction that could keep cafes from giving you that little top-off and, the bane of my existence, the 70% off-sale email. Why do stores keep sending them?

So, um, can I just, can I like vent to you for a little bit? Yes. I know I just met you. I called up Cynthia Price to give her my genius idea that stores should send less emails because Cynthia works with stores that send these emails. Okay, so I get an email a day from, it seems like every store I have ever interacted with ever in any way, shape or form. And I feel like- like something's not working.

Like what could these brands be thinking? Like they are conditioning me to not open their emails ever because it's too many emails. They're conditioning me to just click, click, click, click, click, delete. And also they're kind of making me hate them a little bit. Can I ask you some questions? I'm just curious. Yeah. Cynthia is an email marketing expert at an email marketing company called Litmus. And for some reason, Cynthia loves getting store emails.

It's a browsing opportunity for me. It's a break from my day. I will say I do enjoy clicking and deleting. I'm an inbox zero girl. Oh my god. I was just about to ask you if you were an inbox zero person. I mean that is part of the difference between me and you. If you, like me, think that email has gotten out of control, we are right. Cynthia says, stores send more emails than ever. Okay, if I open my Gmail right now, it's like, Chase, Massage Envy, Thrive Market, Chase, Carter's, Carter's, Carter's, Carter's.

Why is Carter's emailing you so much? Carter's emails me four times a day every single day, Cynthia. What is that? Carter's is a kids clothing store? Oh, wow. Yeah, that's a lot. Like, who buys things from an email that they get? A lot of people. Yeah, of course they're sending emails because it works,

but how? How could this possibly work? It's like a great form of marketing? It is. There are very few tactics that you can use as effectively, as immediately as email. We're out of luck, guys. Of all the forms of marketing, email has one of the highest returns on investment. We know this because stores can usually see when we open their emails, so there's data.

And here's how it all plays out. Let's say you're a store with 100,000 people on your email list and you send out an email that's like, spring deals are in bloom or 70% off your winter faves now. Something like 20 to 40% of people will open that email, like see it. That doesn't mean they're actually clicking through to your store's website though, to see any of your spring deals. On a good day, 3% of those people total are gonna click on your email.

That's not to mention the people that are gonna buy from it. Yeah, just like 3,000 of the 100,000 people you emailed are gonna click through to your store and even fewer are actually going to buy something. So not that many people bite, but some do. And that's worth it. For every $1 spent on email marketing, there is a $42 to $48 return on investment for the

store. That's the average. Yep. And that's a real stat. It's a real stat. A 4,000% return on investment for the store. That's the average. Yep, and that's that's a real stat It's a real stat before thousand percent return on investment. Yeah I mean, it's it's it is incredibly effective part of that is just that email is cheap, right? You're paying for someone to write an email Maybe make it pretty but the bigger part is that email has such a high return on investment because you invited these stores into your inbox.

You have actually raised your hand and said, yeah, send me promotional emails in some way, shape or form. You at some point liked what they were selling or even bought something. That's how you ended up on their email list. So it's just more likely that you will buy something again. Which just is like an entirely different world to play in as a marketer than it would be if I was putting up a billboard on the highway or just trying to target everyone on Instagram who is between the ages of 20 and 25. I mean, those are way different scenarios.

It's expensive to get your ad in front of people online who might not even like what you're selling. And I'm sure Instagram marketing is also relentless and it feels like all social media just knows everything about our wants and likes and our buying patterns. But Cynthia says email marketing is still usually more effective because they just know that we want their content.

But do we though? No, I just signed up because when you buy something online you have to put your email if you want the receipt. Yeah, you just wanted the transactional emails that say like, where's my shipping? That's all I want for every store. All right, Cynthia says some brands, some stores, they do do email marketing very well.

Like they have cult followings. There's a snowboarding gear company that sends out emails when there's fresh snow on the mountains targeted to your location, like the closest mountain to you with fresh snow. That seems useful. Inundating you with emails? Cynthia says, I was right. It is risky. What they're training you to do is block them out

and you're gonna unsubscribe because you're so annoyed by it or you will completely learn to just completely tune them out and you won't even look at what the subject line says at all. You probably are already there. Oh, I'm there. And every couple of months, I will do like a mass unsubscribe purge, which, Cynthia says, is kinda like the biggest F in marketing land.

You had me and you blew it. You lost me. But it doesn't really matter because someone else will like it. So some stores don't really care if they lose me and maybe even damage their reputation with me. I have to wake up every single morning to 30 marketing emails just because someone else out there is gonna buy something.

All right, who else has to get something off their chest? I know I have things to complain about, but Mary Childs. We should all be on the same time zone. Who else has to get something off their chest? I know I have things to complain about, but... Mary Childs. We should all be on the same time zone. Which would mean, like, nighttime is daytime for some people. That would mean that perhaps you and I wake up at what is called 10 p.m. and we go to work and the sun is out and it's shining.

I'm just gonna squash this one right away. You don't want to go to work at 10 p.m. and it's daylight outside. It's just called 10 p.m. What do you care what it's called? A.M. p.m. That's just made up. You were a baby when you learned that it doesn't matter I don't know countries of the world consider it and cafes of the world consider Alexi Horowitz-Ghazi's next gripe

Basically, Alexi hates it when coffee shops charge him for refills. It just like taints the whole cozy coffee shop experience for him, makes him not want to even go back. Like, at least give him a discounted refill. He's a reasonable guy. Some places, they'll say, give me a buck. How about an extra dollar? That's pretty chill.

And then it makes you want to be like, here's an extra dollar in the tip jar. Exactly, exactly. We are on the same team. I feel like we're on the opposite team when they're charging me for the refill. This is just like regular coffee, not like the fancy, that's not like a mocha, choc or something.

It's just like straight up. Straight up. Like coffee. Black cup of coffee. No adulterants. Oh, no sugar, no cream, no sugar, no nothing. Nothing. The gesture of a free little top off when he's setting up shop at a cafe, ordering snacks,

spending money would go a long way for Alexi. He says it would make him so loyal. He'd be like the best repeat customer, he thinks. So he wants to know why so many coffee shops don't see the benefits of offering customers a free refill on like a small 12 ounce cup. Can I ask you, do they make a 16 ounce cup? Yeah, I could buy the larger cup. Isn't that just like the free refill? No, look, there's a there's a problem with that. It gets cold way too fast. It gets cold. You're totally right. It's just a mood that. It gets cold way too fast. It gets cold, you're totally right.

Immediately. It's just a mood thing, it's just a mood thing. It's just the tiniest signal I get about what kind of business this is. For Alexi, it's less about the money or even what's practical. It's more about how all of this makes him feel in a copy shop.

So I called up a sort of expert in how we experience things. I study both experiences that cost something as well as experiences that don't cost something. So I'm really interested in how paying attention to certain things gives us more or less enjoyment. So yes. Enjoyment. Kristin Diehl studies joy, technically satisfaction, at the University of Southern California. Like, the joy we get out of experiences. She teaches consumer behavior, among other things. And I'm just going to say it, Kristen is very joyful.

I'm generally a happy person, I think. And my advisor told me that people either study what they're good at or what they're bad at. Okay, I think this is the perfect match. I think I have some insights there, yes. Much more complicated question than you would think it is. I agree. First of all, Kristin says, we can blame diners for the expectation of free drinks.

Right, because they're the ones who kind of suggested to us that that's something normative. Like the norm for a diner, maybe still, I walk around with this coffee pot that has the coffee burned on the bottom, right? Yeah, diner coffee. Better, you know? They also tend not to be the ones who are profit maximization entities. Sorry. But a coffee shop is not a diner. They don't particularly want you to linger, taking up seats, maybe for hours with just your $5 coffee.

So even if a free refill would make Alexi happy. The incremental benefit of him being a little bit happier with this is probably not worth their cost. So even for like a little bit happier with this is probably not worth their cause, so. Even for like a little top off. Yeah, it's just a little top up to you, but times 24 seven, it's still an expense. Coffee shops are just gonna do what makes them the most profit, right?

That's why they don't do this. Our extra happiness isn't worth it. The man. So if Alexi is gonna be happy in a coffee shop, he's gonna need to charm the workers. Get the rogue employee that's like, I'm supposed to charge you for this, but like, I'm not gonna charge you.

And then you're like, yes, we're in this together. Okay, so that is actually research and then something like that. There's research on how satisfying good surprises actually make us. That works the first time, but then the next time he was like, okay, where's the rogue employee here? Turns out customer happiness is not as valuable as you might think it is. The problem for companies is that when they give things out for free as a surprise, we come to expect it the next time.

And we are not happy if we don't get it. Yeah. And then you're like, is Jack working today? Is Jack here? Because he's normally the guy who gives me my tea. Kristen says there's actually a sad ending to anything that brings us satisfaction. We adapt to that and we get accustomed to that. Even if the rogue employee always reliably gave us the rogue free refill or even if it wasn't rogue at all, if it was company policy like Alexi wants it to be, they could do the exact same thing that made us happy last time.

But we're just not as happy. That is sad. Yeah, I think that's sad. but it's called hedonic adaptation. Hedonic adaptation or the hedonic treadmill. The theory behind this is basically that you don't just go up, up, up in happiness forever. For instance, as you make money and you can buy more and more things, your expectations also rise.

This seems like a good reason for a coffee shop to not give free refills, because they're like, whatever, you're just gonna get mad at us about something later on anyways. It definitely will give your colleague a bigger bump the first time than the fifth time. No question asked.

Yeah, yeah. Okay, I'm gonna tell him, just suck it up, because we're just gonna be dissatisfied eventually anyway because we're terrible. People are terrible. On the upside, that got us out of the caves, right? If we had been happy in the caves, we wouldn't have ventured out. Yes, she did just say on the upside, dissatisfaction is why we came out of the caves. By the way, Alexi might be onto something here, because Starbucks, of all coffee shops,

is bringing back some free refills. Which might sound very exciting now, but we know the excitement will fade. After the break, why it's so hard to fix things these days? Hint, it's all by design. But first... Yes! Umbrellas are the worst! A quick complaint from Kenny Malone.

The umbrella is an inherently selfish thing. You build a little bubble around yourself that is going to poke other people, take up too much room, pour water on other people. An umbrella has negative consumption externalities is how we would put this in the econ world. You use it, you benefit, I'm happy for you. But you are making my life worse when you use the umbrella. So can we just stop? All right.

Alex Goldmark, Planet Money's executive producer, his microwave broke and he got ranty and just like the perfect amount of concerned about the future of fixing things. I go to use the microwave and it just doesn't work. It doesn't turn on, the little digital clock doesn't tell you the time. I've got one of the ones that goes over the stove, the light underneath it doesn't work nothing. And it seems pretty obvious to me that like a fuse blew, like that's just the way it broke, right? Alex wants to fix the fuse himself, even though you apparently definitely should not try to do this. It can be very, very dangerous, but there's no like

fuse panel on the microwave, no little door to open where he can swap it out. And he's like, oh, come on, why would you bury the fuse? So I'm being a little dramatic with my fuse panel, but it's a stand-in for why don't we design things for repair. Like, a appliance that is in your house, made out of lots of metals and, like, toxic parts. He doesn't want to throw it out. I want to try to fix it.

Like, it's just a thing, I believe in it. And I'm so sure it's a fuse. But with no fuse panel, it's more complicated than Alex can handle, and he calls up repair people. And most of them are like, we don't repair microwaves. Like they're too small. Like it's too little. It's not even worth it. But the manufacturer, they have their official repair people, right? So he calls them up. And they're like, cool, we will send somebody. It will be $179 for them to show up. Then it will be $200 an hour. be $179 for them to show up. Then it will be $200 an hour, billed every six minutes in increments as they do the repair plus the parts.

It was going to cost Alex $981 to fix his broken microwave and just $793 to buy a new one, have someone deliver it and install it. Where's the incentive to fix things? Sarah, there's a saying in our business, our number one competitor is the price of a new appliance. Oh, this is Stuart Couter with the repair company, Mr. Appliance. Wait, are you Mr. Appliance? I'm Mr. Appliance, New York City.

I own the New York City franchises. Stuart has repair people driving to people's homes all over the city, and he has his own complaints about that, like expensive parking, tolls. Congestion pricing, I mean, ridiculous things. Stewart, Mr. Appliance, is very proudly non-woke, as he says. Yes, very good.

Very proud of his Queens, New York accent. Oh, of course. It was my nickname in college. What was your nickname in college? Queens? Queens. Oh, that is such a great nickname. And Stewart is based in Manhattan,

where Alex's broken microwave was and where Alex got his decently expensive repair quote. Yeah, $200 an hour, I think, is the going rate. Does that seem right? Seems cheap to me. Oh, Stuart asks me a bunch of questions about Alex's microwave, which I'm going to let Alex take. First of all, how old is the microwave? Five years. How much did you pay for the microwave?

$400. Okay. And what brand is it? Bosch. Bosch. All right. Knowing the brand is very important. And the reason for that is some brands make their units easier to repair than others. Yes. Stewart says several manufacturers make products that are not meant to be repaired at all. They make the repair difficult. They put the replacement parts in difficult spots. They make it time consuming,

hard to get to, hard to take apart. They just, they make it time consuming, hard to get to, hard to take apart. They just, they make it difficult, as opposed to other companies that make repairs very easy. This is what I'm talking about. It's like some appliances, even if you're like the handiest, handy person. The manufacturer doesn't want it. All right, some manufacturers put parts

in difficult to reach places, because they want you to rely on them for repairs. There's actually a whole right-to-repair movement of people saying, we shouldn't have to rely on the manufacturer. We should have access to the tools and information we need to repair the things that we have bought. Some states have laws that give people the right to repair. But then other brands just actually make it impossible for anyone to repair. If the part breaks, they do not make the replacement part.

It doesn't exist. So you have no option. You have to throw the appliance out and buy a new one. If you ask Stewart, manufacturers do this because they don't really make any money when you repair things. They make money when you buy a new one. If you ask Stewart, manufacturers do this because they don't really make any money when you repair things. They make money when you buy a new appliance. But it's not just that. Sometimes brands are just making things in the cheapest way possible. Like, one brand makes a part out of 100% steel when another one makes it out of 100% plastic. So it's just not meant to last that long. Which, on the bright bright side means that there are cheap appliances available.

Everyone can have them. Alex's Microwave is apparently not one of those brands. No, Snowbosh is actually, their products are meant to be repaired. And that doesn't mean it's cost effective to repair them, but they're meant to be repaired. And that means Bosch will make parts for them for many years. Yeah, just because it's designed to be repaired does not mean that it will make sense financially to repair it. A repair person has to come to you, right?

It's a very high skilled trade. Yeah. It takes a long time to learn it. And you're not just learning how to fix one appliance or anything, how to fix all appliances. If you have to know how to fix a microwave, you have to also know how to fix a dishwasher and a washing machine, stoves, which mean you need to know plumbing, electrical,

there could be gas leaks, pretty heavy lifting or refrigerator, right? And this was Alex's point at the very beginning of the show that the high cost of repair makes him sad for the future of this skilled labor in the US. He wants to be able to use that labor, but when it becomes so expensive, it's like, well, yeah, just buy the other one. That's just way of the industry. So and you guys try to like, oh, let's bring down our prices. But like, you're just you're

stuck. You can't bring them down. For us it costs what it costs. And sometimes this is nothing you can do. The repair is more expensive than the appliance. But a lot of times the customer still repairs it because it matches the kitchen. It has custom cabinetry. The new one is different. It's a different size.

They'd have to call a carpenter. So your bread and butter is kind of like people with a fancy modern kitchen. High end. We go to high end appliances. If it was a $500 microwave, we wouldn't even come out. We'd tell you, go buy a new one. The repair market, it's a higher-end market.

By the way, Alex did not buy a new microwave. A repair person came to him and actually told him exactly what the problem was and where he could go on YouTube to fix it himself. Which again, ugh, you should not do. Never. What about like if your own microwave breaks, would you know how to fix your own microwave? I wouldn't even try. I'm going to tell my boss that.

So those are our gripes. And didn't it feel good complaining catharsis? Well, apparently recent research has shown that venting and letting it all out can actually make you more riled up, more stressed out. Venting may not actually be good unless the person you're venting to can help broaden your perspective, see the other side, which we did, right? This is a very, okay, this is, I'm gonna sound ridiculous. Erica Barris.

I cannot stand little free libraries. We have free libraries, they are actual libraries, they are called libraries. Erica, this is a genius grievance. This episode of Planet Money was produced by the one and only James Need and edited by Marianne McKeown. It was fact checked by the amazing Sierra Juarez

and engineered by James Willis with help from Jimmy Keely. Alex Goldmark is Planet Money's executive producer. Special thanks to Jamal Miller at Intuit Mailchimp. I'm Sierra Gonzalez. This is Thanks for listening to us bent.