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2010 Consumer Complaint Survey Report

July 30, 2011 Comments off

2010 Consumer Complaint Survey Report (PDF)
Source: Consumer Federation of America, National Association of Consumer Agency Administrators, North American Consumer Protection Investigators

Key Findings

  • As in the last survey, complaints about credit and debt are second only to auto-related complaints in the top ten. Fraud is a new category in the top ten.
  • No single type of complaint stood out as the fastest-growing or worst in 2010. The complaints that state and local consumer agencies received last year ran the gamut from auto sales to sweepstakes scams. Many of the complaint examples that agencies provided, however, were related to the difficult financial situations that consumers and businesses faced.
  • New types of complaints included problems with group discount coupons, medical billing, companies offering to buy consumers’ cars,  “recovery services” that falsely promise to retrieve money that consumers have lost to timeshare resale companies, massive data breaches, billing disputes spanning many years, the “grandparent scam,” tax-related scams, massive data breaches, and wireless TV contracts.   
  • The agencies surveyed received more than 252,000 complaints in total last year and collectively obtained in excess of $208 million in restitution and savings for consumers.
  • Half of the agencies that responded to the question about their biggest challenge last year cited budget cuts and limited resources, which often forced them to “do more with less.”
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