Top Ten Consumer Complaints Dominated By Lies And Poor Service

The Consumer Federation of America has come out with its list of the top ten complaints for 2009 based on a survey conducted with the National Association of Consumer Agency Administrators and the North American Consumer Protection Investigators.

The items on the complaint list are predictable, and underscore the pitfalls of consumers not paying close attention to the goods and services that they buy.

The top ten items are:

1. misrepresentations about auto sales and service,
2. illegal and abusive activities for credit card holders which include billing disputes,
3. poor workmanship for home building and repairs,
4. problems with billing and service for cable and telecom services,
5. false advertising and defective products as a result or retail sales,
6. failure of service people to perform and shoddy work,
7. deceptive practices in internet sales,
8. misrepresentation about household goods and delivery commitments,
9. (i) disputes with landlords and (ii) home solicitations by door-to-door or internet sales people (TIED), and
10. trouble with healthcare practitioners including misleading licences and poor healthcare.

The report is based on a poll of 33  state, county, and city consumer protection groups.

It is no surprise that one nearly ubiquitous complaint is misrepresentation of mortgages, especially with the number of subprime mortgages issued in the last few years and the number of people who have defaulted on loans. The growing complaint, according to the survey, involves companies that say they can help people with troubled mortgages.

The list may be fascinating, but the reasons for the complaints are not. Almost every issue on the list could be addressed by consumers who simply asked basic questions about the services they were to receive or the goods they were about to buy. Unscrupulous sellers are hard to regulate, but deceptive practices can be avoided by a modest evaluation of “the small print” in leases, cable plans, internet offers, and the credentials of healthcare providers.

Caveat emptor was good advice when the Romans coined the phrase. It is just as good many centuries later.

Douglas A. McIntyre