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| | What To Do If You Have a Consumer Complaint
If any of you read the front-page article in yesterday’s paper, you would have seen that not even the Northeast Kingdom Chamber is immune from consumer scams. My day decidedly changed when Sandy Thorpe, from Rural Community Transportation, presented me with a fax from an out-of-state outfit, called Hometown Productions, which was encouraging RCT to renew an ad with its company.
The problem was that the ad the company was trying to sell them was ours, an advertisement Rural Community Transportation had placed in our most recent annual membership directory. We had even created the ad for RCT, right down to the picture I took for the ad. There seemed little gray area that Hometown’s advertising practices were misleading and deceptive.
Reassuring Sandy that I would take care of this, I called the outfit in question and was surprised at the response. Even though the Hometown fax clearly stated it was an “ad copy renewal form” and showed the supposed “previous ad,” this company would not admit to doing anything wrong. Hometown seemed to think it had the right to lift our ad, present it as its own, charge three times more money for it and keep on doing what they were doing.
They picked the wrong woman to tick off.
What I did next was what we all should do when we cannot resolve a consumer complaint, and that is to report these actions. But before I tell you how to do that, I want to stress some points here that should not go unnoticed. The first is the importance of documenting the incident in question, taking down what transpired, recording very specific details of the case in question, and noting all the people you talked with at the company in question as you reported your complaint with the business.
The second point, and this is especially important when you are dealing with local businesses, is the need to try to resolve these issues before formally lodging official complaints against them. Often, problems have arisen through a simple misunderstanding, something that can be easily resolved with a mutually beneficial agreement reached.
Another step is calling a chamber of commerce, such as ours, and reporting the incident. When it is a case involving one of our chamber members, especially, we will step in and help you work out this issue.
If you have tried everything you can to resolve this complaint, to no avail, you can report the concern to your respective state consumer assistance programs. If you go to our web site, www.nekchamber.com, you can find “Consumer Assistance Info” under our “Doing Business” section. A copy of this column and the necessary contact information for the Vermont and New Hampshire offices will be included.
I have to give that sassy Hometown Productions lady credit because she had moxie to take on a chamber of commerce, the very folks who report and handle consumer complaints. I am sure I will be widely cursed at their Peoria headquarters, as representatives from two state consumer protection offices and the Better Business Bureau contact them in the weeks to come, but the company had a chance to correct their misleading practices and did not. The outfit will end up paying a price for their actions.
I will keep you apprised on how this issue plays out, as I expect I will hear back on how the issue is resolved from the consumer agencies in question. In the meantime, if something sounds misleading, too good to be true or is downright deceptive, question the company in question and ask them to provide supporting documentation. The dollar you save may be your own.
(Darcie McCann is the director of the Northeast Kingdom Chamber. She has been known to put fear into the hearts of telemarketers.)
VERMONT CONSUMER INFORMATION (Written complaints only: Consumer Assistance Program
146 University Place
Burlington, VT 05405
FAX: (802) 656-1423
http://www.uvm.edu/consumer/?Page=complaint.html
NEW HAMPSHIRE CONSUMER INFORMATION:
New Hampshire Consumer Assistance Program
21 South Fruit St, Suite #14
Concord, NH 03301
(800) 852-3416
http://www.nh.gov/insurance
consumerservices@ins.nh.gov
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