Biden's beef with bad customer service

By Greg Rosalsky,

Wailin Wong, Angel Carreras, Kate Concannon

Published August 22, 2024 at 6:58 PM EDT

Earlier this month, the White House unveiled a new initiative aimed at trying to serve and protect American consumers: Time is Money.

It's an array of actions the Biden Harris administration is taking to stomp out business processes that waste consumers time and money, like, for example, making it unnecessarily difficult to cancel a subscription, get an airline ticket refund, or file an insurance claim.

On today's episode: In a competitive market, companies want to treat their customers well or else they'll lose their customers to competitors ... so why does the White House want to intervene in this area of the free market?

Related Episode:
Junk fees, unfilled jobs, jackpot

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Greg Rosalsky

Since 2018, Greg Rosalsky has been a writer and reporter at NPR's Planet Money.

See stories by Greg Rosalsky

Wailin Wong

Wailin Wong is a long-time business and economics journalist who's reported from a Chilean mountaintop, an embalming fluid factory and lots of places in between. She is a host of The Indicator from Planet Money. Previously, she launched and co-hosted two branded podcasts for a software company and covered tech and startups for the Chicago Tribune. Wailin started her career as a correspondent for Dow Jones Newswires in Buenos Aires. In her spare time, she plays violin in one of the oldest community orchestras in the U.S.

Angel Carreras

Angel Carreras is an assistant producer for The Indicator from Planet Money. He is a Bakersfield-raised, Cal State Long Beach graduate. He previously worked at KCRW, the NPR member station in Los Angeles. He has produced award-winning and character-driven work, with subjects that have included masked puppeteers, mutual aid groups, and community activists.

Kate Concannon

Kate Concannon is the Supervising Senior Editor at The Indicator from Planet Money. She leads this small, collaborative team of hosts, reporters and producers in making sense of crucial, but often complex and confusing, economic news in just 10 minutes a day.