Study eyes rising cost of ‘annoyance economy’

Examples include junk fees, waiting on hold

Daniel de Visé

USA TODAY

Think about the time you spend waiting on hold, blocking junk messages and clicking – and clicking, and clicking – to cancel unwanted subscriptions.

A new report ascribes a cost to the “annoyance economy”: All that we pay in lost time and money for the hassles of daily life as American consumers.

The study, published in February by the progressive Groundwork Collaborative think tank, focuses on what it terms a torrent of small abuses heaped on consumers by bad actors and indifferent companies: Phone scams. Robocalls and spam emails. Junk fees on tickets, bank transactions and hotel rooms.

“It’s all the ways that people experience friction in their everyday life,” said Chad Maisel, a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress and coauthor of the report. He collaborated with Neale Mahoney, a Stanford University economist.

A major function of the annoyance economy, the report says, is to make it harder for consumers to accomplish anything that’s against a company’s financial interest. Consider how much more trying it can be to cancel a subscription than to start one, or how long it can take to reach customer service when an app doesn’t work.

“Enforcement against bad actors has been significantly scaled back, to the point where it’s virtually nonexistent,” Maisel said. “It’s both a real retreat on the enforcement side, and it’s really a lack of a proactive, affirmative agenda to set the rules of the road.”

How much the ‘annoyance economy’ costs consumers

All told, the report says, the annoyance economy costs American consumers $166 billion a year in lost time and dollars. Here’s a rough breakdown:

● Junk fees: $90 billion a year ● Phone scams: $25.4 billion ● Calls with health insurance administrators: $21.6 billion

● Waiting for medical services: $19.4 billion

● Robocalls: $8 billion ● Waiting for government services: $1.6 billion Maisel related an encounter with the annoyance economy that ate up half an hour of his time one recent day, all for a seemingly innocuous quest to collect a rebate on an order of contact lenses.

“I had to download the app,” he said. “I had to print out the receipt I was given, because I had to mail it in. And before I mailed it in, I had to take a picture of it and upload it to the app.”

The point of the ordeal, Maisel said, was that the company that sold him the contact lenses didn’t really want to give him the rebate.

As a rule, the report found, companies make it very easy to give them your money. Getting it back can be a chore.

A 2024 survey of the news industry found that every newspaper allowed new subscribers to sign up online, but fewer than half let readers cancel without a phone call.

In the health insurance industry, Maisel said, some carriers still require that certain claims for reimbursement be submitted by fax or mail.

Report urges administration to protect American consumers

The annoyance economy report’s main policy goal is to pressure the Trump administration to crack down on consumer abuses.

President Donald Trump has tried to shut down the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, or CFPB, a federal watchdog agency that has endured a steady drumbeat of criticism from the financial industry and congressional Republicans.

In an emailed statement to USA TODAY in January, acting CFPB Director Russell Vought said the Trump administration was overhauling an “abusive” agency that was “weaponized against the American people and industries that serve them.”

The campaign knocked the wind out of several initiatives championed by consumer advocates.

The consumer agency capped many credit card late fees at $8 in 2024. Litigation ensnared the rule, and the agency eventually abandoned it.

The CFPB capped many bank overdraft fees at $5 in the same year. Republican lawmakers introduced legislation that reversed the rule.

The Biden-era Federal Trade Commission enacted a click-to-cancel rule that would make it as easy to end a subscription as to start one. A court struck it down, although a bipartisan bill in Congress now aims to replace it.

The Biden administration enacted new rules for airline passengers, providing customer refunds for canceled or disrupted flights and transparency about fees. The Trump administration is scuttling many of those rules.

Maisel’s report contends the annoyance economy has gotten worse.

Over the past two decades, for example, the amount of time consumers spend on the phone with customer service agents has risen 60%, the report states, citing data from the federal American Time Use Survey.

Credit card late fees and other junk fees have been on the rise, according to the CFPB.

Consumer advocates applauded the annoyance economy report.

“Consumers should not have to pay in wasted time and surprise charges just to access basic services,” Susan Weinstock, CEO of the Consumer Federation of America, said in a statement. “This report underscores how junk fees and needless complexity make the affordability crisis even worse.”

Contributing: Betty Lin-Fisher, USA TODAY