Comment by datsci_est_2015
19 hours ago
Services that PE has ruined in my city by rent-seeking:
- Veterinary services
- Dental services
- Optometry services
- Urgent care services
I go out of my (sometimes significantly) to go to non-PE owned companies and services, and the experience is so much better it's like experiencing an entirely different quality of life. My 2¢ is that a decent chunk of the "dissolution of the social contract" in the US is due to the way that people are treated when they interact with these soulless entities.
I wish there were some kind of public database that allowed easy lookup of whether a given company is owned by a private equity firm.
This exists partially - you can often find it by searching "[company name] acquired by" + checking the acquiring firm.
It should be integrated with the ways that people find those businesses, including maps, Web search, and "AI chat".
I’d happily pay for a tool that lets me opt out of being slowly nickel-and-dimed by entities optimized for short-term yield. This feels like infrastructure: a small amount of collective effort that gives individuals leverage again. Visibility is the lever. And it could be done, it's just more organizing and involvement in local politics. The information already exists, it’s just effectively invisible, and a small translation layer could collapse it into a one-second answer, letting people avoid operators with a predictable extractive playbook, with the only real challenge being the constant, boring maintenance in an environment designed for churn and opacity. Eventually this should revolve around organizing and politics to make a difference.
The challenge: these entities are designed to be hard to identify until after you're locked in.
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I agree! I think this kind of resource would be very useful to a lot of people!
Storage unit rental went from $90 in 2014 to $110 about 2017, but then was acquired by CubeSmart which is publicly traded: now $241 per month. I know the local taxes and they have stayed about the same all those years.
Storage units are the way station to the thrift store / city dump.
I had a storage unit for a while until I realized that the monthly bill was more than the value of the contents.
>I had a storage unit for a while until I realized that the monthly bill was more than the value of the contents.
For every one of you there's a few people using it as business storage and dozens of people who are dealing with living situation stuff (college housing vs apartment, house closing timing, job relocation, house renovation, etc, etc, etc) that trade in and out of units on like a 1-2mo timeline.
Source: Almost bought one.
I’m beyond peeved by the inability to get any sort of price guarantee from these places more than 3 months in advance.
I’ve even offered to pay for several years in advance at their “current” rate, and they won’t accept it.
My behavioral economics pricing idea for storage unit is to charge $1 for the first month but then double every month (or something like that). You shouldn't put stuff in storage long term and you're getting ripped off.
Though less critical to our lives, PE has ruined loads of retail and restaurant options as well - Sears, Toy ‘R’ Us, Red Lobster, and Shari’s come to mind.
Water used to be managed by a local cool here where I live. I had been for decades.
A few months ago i got an email saying that PE had acquired it.
I was paying between ~$25/month before. Today i got the first bill from new management for $89.
Same volume/usage, nothing significantly different.
Sigh.
Definitely complain to you local water/utility regulator, and your state representative.
Regional regulators have to approve the transfer of ownership of water utilities. The best time to fight this sort of thing is as early as possible.
Coutry wide only 16% of dental practices are DSO, and it's not that functionally different from junior dentists getting loans to set up their practices with practices themselves as a collateral.