Let the Buyer Beware !!!
There’s an idea floating around out there that you may or may not be familiar with: in fact, maybe you've run up against it in your life as a consumer. It's the idea of caveat emptor , “let the buyer beware,” and basically requires that we be smart, savvy consumers So if you buy that red, shiny, used car without doing your research, and you later find out that the engine is toast-well, tough luck! Or if you buy those magic weight loss pills that promise you will lose 30 pounds in a month, and you gain 3 pounds-sorry, Charlie! And if (God forbid!) you get a cute little puppy from a puppy mill ,and it turns out to be a sick little puppy -you foot the bill, baby!
The principle of “let the buyer beware" puts consumers in the position of having to research purchases so they know what the heck they're buying before they take it home and it falls apart. Classic example: I bought a great looking record player at a church sale a couple of weeks ago; the tag said "It works!” But did I plug it out before I bought it? Nope. Did it work when I got it home? Nope. Good thing I was only out five bucks on that one-but just imagine, false advertising in a church! You might think this idea is really unfair-I mean, why should we have to be the ones who "beware"? Why don't those stinkers who produce the widgets and other junk that gets put on the market have to follow certain guidelines? The answer is-they do. But the government doesn't oversee every minute detail of each product that comes to market. We could spend billions of dollars on monitoring manufacturers alone! The truth is, we don't want to commit huge portions of our federal budget to this kind of vigilance.