By John DeFore

There’s probably not a single consumer in America who hasn’t at least once been stunned by a bill that was much higher than he was led to believe it would be. But for every ticked-off customer who actually does something about that bill — calls to complain, investigates the fees, cancels the service — how many grit their teeth and do nothing? Two dozen? Two hundred? Given the hassles and hurdles involved, it wouldn’t be surprising if only one person in 1,000 regularly went to bat against tricky marketing.

That number’s going to rise if Bob Sullivan has anything to say about it. Sullivan, a longtime TV reporter who pens the “Red Tape Chronicles” blog for MSNBC, has just written a book called Gotcha Capitalism ($14.95) that aims to explain how so many of the fees and loopholes we face are part of a growing movement in which companies intentionally hide the costs of their products so we can’t make informed decisions.

A quick read — and one that’s well organized into targeted chapters, for those who’d rather use it as a reference work than read it front to back — the book strikes a riled-up populist tone without crossing over into the Michael Moore Zone. It devotes chapters to the most common gotchas in fields where you know they exist (cellphone contracts, cable TV bills) and places, like mortgages and retirement funds, where most people have a hard time telling legitimate charges from inflated ones. He explains how basic services like plain-vanilla home phone lines have skyrocketed in cost despite supposed attempts to foster competition; shows what a scam mail-in rebates can be; and explains why you should never buy a gift card.

But Sullivan doesn’t stop at explanations. The book is explicitly designed as a consumer self-help reference, and has a “Toolkit” roughly 100 pages long that’s full of numbers to call, addresses to write and ideas about how to right the wrongs that faceless corporations commit on a regular basis.

(For instance, while customer “service” telephone workers have long read from scripts that help them steer you where companies want you, Sullivan offers some scripts of his own — like his calm, patient scenario for dealing with an operator trying to sell you one product when you’re calling about another, which ends: “I appreciate that your job requires you to tell me about this, but I said I’m not interested and I do not want to hear about any promotions and I do not want to purchase anything additional at this time. I want you to solve my problem.” Whew.)

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