Category: Law
Author: Joseph R. Vazzo
Idea: WANTED;
An attorney to bring suit against the catalog mail order industry. Is not the practice of demanding a "handling charge" a violation of
law?
Since when should a customer pay any company employee for work performed on the firm's work site? Are those who "handle the product to be shipped not already paid? Is not asking the buyer to pay these indivdiuals just another way of in-creasing the price of the product?
Is not the purchaser now a part time employer of these employees?
How are the proceeds labeled on the firm's financial statements?
Is there a separate account for this income? Is it not likely that this income is masked as something other than receipts from sales.
There is absolutely no legal reason that the purchaser pay the
employee to do work somewhere other than at the purchasers location.
There is strong likelihood that these mail-order houses are guily of "hiding" income.
Thats it.




Changing the price of every product a company carries would increase the price of those products further more into the future and create more misunderstanding then the shock of an additional handling charge. Cost recovery is the simplest way to recover the cost of storing and handling products. If storage and handling costs go up it need not be necessary to update your entire catalogue, databases of product information, or informing others of the change for millions of products. This would be an accountants worst nightmare and the simplest way to recover these costs is to change a single price - The handling.
Posted by: Michael Murphy | December 09, 2006 at 09:14 PM