Tag Archives: Consumer Ally

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The Top 10 Consumer Complaints of 2012

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By Selena Maranjian

The top complaints in America

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If you’re fed up with hearing people complain, imagine being the Consumer Sentinel Network. This online database for law enforcement compiled and categorized more than 2 million complaints in 2012 — instances of fraud, scams, schemes, and violations consumers reported to everyone from the FTC to the Better Business Bureau to the U.S. Postal Inspection Service.

So which industries or groups of people cause us the most grief? Here are the CSN‘s findings for the top 10 complaint categories and the percentage of the total complaints that each represents:

1. Identity theft (18 percent)
2. Debt collection (10 percent)
3. Banks and lenders (6 percent)
4. Shop-at-home and catalog sales (6 percent)
5. Prizes, sweepstakes, and lotteries (5 percent)
6. Impostor scams (4 percent)
7. Internet services (4 percent)
8. Auto-related complaints (4 percent)
9. Telephone and mobile services (4 percent)
10. Credit cards (3 percent)

Stolen identities
It makes sense that identity theft tops the list. Detecting, uncovering and correcting the fallout from identity theft is a long, labyrinthine process. Sure, it’s terrible if you lose, say, $500 or $1,000. But with identity theft, some people have not only lost a lot of money but have spent years trying to undo the damage done, encountering many frustrations along the way.

Most of us know to shred documents containing personal information before discarding them, and to be careful to whom we divulge personal information. It can be easy to imagine that identity theft won’t happen to us. But according to the CSN, nearly one-fifth of all complaints — a whopping 369,132 — were about identity theft.

Military variations
The distribution of complaints was different among military personnel than other Americans. For example, while their top two complaints were the same as the overall results, their No. 6 complaint category was mortgage foreclosure relief and debt management, while it was just 15th for the overall nation.

Foreclosures and debt problems have been major issues for many service members. That’s because they often receive orders to pick up and move to a new location and assignment, but with our economy struggling and home prices depressed, they can end up owing more than their homes are worth. Worse still, hundreds have had their homes illegally foreclosed upon by big banks — JPMorgan Chase (JPM), Wells Fargo (WFC), Bank of America (BAC), and Citigroup (C) — as has been reported by The New York Times. Military members should know that settlements have been struck with big banks to address these and other wrongs, and that entities such as the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau are looking out for their interests.

Fraud
This wonderful digital age has ushered in new ways for scammers to scam us. The most common method …read more
Source: FULL ARTICLE at DailyFinance

Business, Finance, Occupation & Industry

Bus Passenger to Greyhound: Don't Freeze Me, Bro

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By Matt Brownell

Greyhound Bus

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A Greyhound bus passenger who was left outside a locked bus station in sub-zero temperatures for a layover is petitioning the bus service to stop exposing its passengers to the elements.

Ankur Singh said that last month he was traveling by bus from Illinois to Minnesota, and his itinerary included an early-morning, five-hour layover in Des Moines, Iowa. The bus arrived in Des Moines and dropped the passengers off at 4 a.m., but the bus terminal didn’t open its doors until 5 a.m. That meant Singh and about 10 other passengers were forced to wait outside for an hour in frigid Midwestern temperatures in the dead of winter. Singh said that with the windchill, it was minus 17 degrees that morning.

In the wake of the incident, Singh took to the internet, posting a petition to Change.org titled “Greyhound: Don’t Put Customers at Risk for Hypothermia and Frostbite.” As of this writing, it’s garnered more than 88,000 signatures.

The good news is that it doesn’t appear that any of the stranded passengers actually got frostbite or hypothermia. Singh says he survived by putting on all the clothes in his bag. He also says that when an older woman waiting with them started “shaking uncontrollably,” another man gave her his jacket. Giving those conditions, it’s easy to see how the layover could have ended in disaster.

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“It’s mind-boggling to me that they could even think of doing something like that,” Singh told us.

Perhaps most troubling is that Greyhound didn’t give any kind of warning about the outdoor layover on their tickets. Singh says passengers weren’t informed until after they’d boarded the bus.

The good news is that the petition seems to have caught Greyhound’s attention. Singh says he spoke with a media relations director from the company who informed him that the company was speaking with the partner carriers who owned the Des Moines station.

“I just want to make sure they solve it nationwide and not just at the [Des Moines] station,” he says.

In the meantime, though, there’s the issue of Greyhound failing to warn customers of the outdoor layovers in advance. Singh says that topic didn’t come up during his conversation, and Greyhound did not respond to our request for comment.

Matt Brownell is the consumer and retail reporter for DailyFinance. You can reach him at Matt.Brownell@teamaol.com, and follow him on Twitter at @Brownellorama.

Photo Credit: Spencer Platt/Getty Images

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Business, Finance, Occupation & Industry

5 Ways Consumers Can Protect Themselves in 5 Minutes

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By Matt Brownell

Consumer protection week

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This week is Consumer Protection Week, when a group of nonprofits and government agencies come together to highlight critical issues ranging from identity theft to dodgy debt collector practices.

Most consumer protection tips tend to be reactive — telling you how to spot a scam email, for instance, or respond to a collections call. But there are also certain proactive steps you can take right now to head off fraud and financial screw-ups before they even take place.

Here are five actions you can take to protect yourself as a consumer, all of which should take less than five minutes to complete.

1. Turn on Two-Step Verification on Your Email

Security experts will tell you that you should have a different password for every online account you open. But anyone who uses the Internet on a regular basis knows that this is virtually impossible — you likely have dozens of accounts ranging from bank accounts to email to social media to news sites, and you access them on multiple devices.

You have a few options here. One is to use a few strong, unique passwords for your most sensitive accounts and then repeat passwords for non-critical accounts. A better choice is to use a password-management tool like LastPass; you’ll only have to remember one master password, and the program will generate nigh-uncrackable passwords for all of your accounts.

But whichever route you choose, there’s one easy step that you should take now: Enable two-step verification on your email.

Email is in many ways your most important account: When you forget a password to one of your other accounts, the password reset link will be sent to your email. If someone takes over your email, they can reset all the passwords to your other accounts and take them over.

Fortunately, email providers like Gmail now offer what’s known as two-step verification. Enabling this feature means that if someone tries to access your email account from a different computer than you usually use, they’ll need more than just your password — they’ll also need a second one-time password that’s sent to your mobile phone. So unless the hacker has also gotten ahold of your phone, they’ll be unable to get into your account.

Two-factor authentication can be set up in less than 5 minutes. We’d recommend putting it in place for your email and bank accounts.

2. Get on the Do-Not-Call List

If you’re being harassed by a telemarketer, you can always block the call. But let’s be honest: You probably don’t want to hear from any telemarketers, ever, so you might as well exercise your right to block them forever.

If you didn’t get on the do-not-call list when it first came out, don’t fret: You can do it any time, and you can add up to three numbers, including your …read more
Source: FULL ARTICLE at DailyFinance

Business, Finance, Occupation & Industry

Where Best Buy's New Price-Match Policy Falls Short

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By Matt Brownell

Best Buy

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On Friday, Best Buy (BBY) announced a new price-match policy that will include such online competitors as Amazon.com (AMZN), but the new policy falls short in one key respect: The retailer won’t match a better price you find after you’ve made your purchase.

Both Best Buy and Target (TGT) offered to price-match online competitors during the holiday season, and last month, Target announced that it would do so year-round. Now, Best Buy is following Target’s lead.

But where Target’s policy…

Where Best Buy’s New Price-Match Policy Falls Short originally appeared on DailyFinance.com on 2013-02-20T10:50:00Z.

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Source: FULL ARTICLE at DailyFinance