That's why you should use local banks and companies. Their costs should matter to you, because they will pass savings on to their customers. The national companies don't care about anything but the bottom line. That's the problem with the country today, nobody cares about the big picture. There is a reason why I use the local employee owned grocery stores instead of the national chains and I use the local or small regional banks. I get my car serviced at the local shop instead of one of the national chain stores. People need to start caring more and supporting their neighbors, i.e. the local business'. All these little things really do make a difference.
You know, in theory I think I might agree with you. However, in practice, when I give local places a shot, they are almost always more difficult for me to deal with than their national chain equivalent. Maybe it's just the town I live in. For a lot of reasons, I'd kind of like to move and start over somewhere different, but there are a lot of practical reasons why I can't.
I'll give you a couple brief examples of where local places have messed things up:
1. Some years back, I had an issue with water in my gas tank. Brought it into a local car mechanic. He said it'd be ready the next day. I called daily for a week asking when it would be ready, he always said the next day, so I always called back the next day and it wasn't ever ready. Turned out, when I started to press him on it, it was a one day repair job, but he had to empty the water logged gas to clean the system out and he only had once container to do it with, that was filled with someone else's gas, and which for some reason he couldn't get emptied. It was ridiculous. I said, just put it in whatever, he said it had to be an approved container. I said then buy them, you're an auto mechanic, sometimes you need to fix more than one car at a time.
Long story short, I had to buy him the containers and it took like a week and a half to get my car back -- the only car I had access to and desperately needed -- because he couldn't do a one day job in a day and didn't seem to have the resources to handle more than one car at once.
By contrast, I go to a national chain place for other car repairs and they often do them while I wait in their air conditioned/heated waiting room.
2. Oil changes. Jiffy Lube, you drive to the back entry gate, someone immediately meets you at your car takes your keys, you wait in a nice little room briefly, and then you're done. Never had a long wait. One of the local non-chain places I tried involved no one coming to greet me, me eventually parking, me walking into the place and someone saying "I'll be with you in a bit" and then coming back a half hour later only to tell me it'd be another 45 minute wait until he could even look at my car to change the oil.
3. Food wise- local places seem to have a longer wait, higher prices, and lower quality food than the national chains when it comes to lower end stuff like subs.
4. Bank wise, I'm hesitant to deal with a non-chain because you can't always find branches or ATMs when you are out of town. A big chain, you can, and you can thus get emergency situations resolved quicker just by walking in to the closest one if you're on the road, and avoid out of network ATM fees. And the local banks often have inferior online resources, no 24/7 number to call for support, idiosyncratic surcharges and ways of doing things, etc..
Might I switch banks someday? It's possible. But for now I like where I'm at. You see how much I complain about Dish at times. I'm not happy with much. But I love my bank. So, as someone who isn't happy with much, when I'm happy with something, I understandably tend to be pretty loyal to it unless it changes the way it does business or it's rates/fees. When you're unhappy with most companies and you find one you like in something, it's pretty exciting and not something you want to mess with too much.
Because if I were to switch, the odds are, I'd find something I didn't like about the next one.
I'd love to find the tv equivalent of my bank.
5. Food wise, the one local grocery store that's not a chain is more expensive than at least three other chain grocery stores in town.
6. Went to a vet who was really unprofessional (Long story). Really wish there were vet chains with upfront pricing and better policies.
I mean, I don't want to say local places are always bad and chains are always good. Obviously, that's not true. I really like my doctor, and he's a local guy (Well part of a small local chain, I guess). I've had service nightmares with national companies like Comcast at times. It's not universal.
But I just find with national places, you're more likely to have them act in a fairly standardized reasonably customer friendly way (By today's standards, anyhow), and give you costs up front. Local guys often have sort of eccentric ways of doing things, shock me with surprisingly big bills, don't always get stuff done in the time one would expect, and sometimes lack basic equipment they need to do basic things.
I don't know, in my heart, I want to support the mom and pop entrepreneur types and not the big corporate conglomerates, but it just seems like so few of the local places are any good, at least where I live. They've got to step up their game-- better service, higher competency ratios, lower prices, etc.-- and at least get to the point where they're even with national chains in terms of over all value, for me to start really considering them again.
I understand the elderly component, but that isn't the demographic I'm referring to.
