Sources for Consumer Complaints

consumer-advocacy
Since my difficulty with Circuit City, I have found several outstanding consumer complaint websites. I feel they are wonderful sources as not only do they give the consumer a venue to spew their difficulty out to the world, but it provides a forum where others may provide suggestions toward resolution. Some of these resolutions include obtaining contact information for corporate executives, information that is not easily found on business sites these days.

Here they are:

• My 3 Cents
• Clark Howard (consumer advocate in Florida serving the nation)
• Planet Feedback
• Public Citizen Protecting Health, Safety, and Democracy
• Consumer Affairs

Through one of the above sites, I was able to terminate, without fees, a cingular account for three phone lines after I had gone through a period of time getting double billed from both AT&T and Cingular during their transition. Since they are now going back to AT&T, I imagine the double billing from both companies names is going on again. I can't believe there hasn't been a class action suit pertaining to that as yet.

Clark Howard is a radio consumer advocate that focuses on saving money and finding the truth about products and services. The neat thing about his website is that you can either email a question or call to speak with a consumer advocate. These folks are volunteers under the tutorship of Mr. Clark and they will answer your questions for information as to the best course of action to take. They were key in resolving my difficulty with Cingular. I had a corporate executive, yes a top brass individual from Cingular call me within 3 days after my consultation with the "team Clark" folks. Clark Howard starting out in the travel industry. He is a self made millionaire. I remember once reading on his site that he is a frequent Coscto shopper. The email to contact "team Clark" is teamclark@clarkhoward.com. They are wonderfully helpful folks.

Another individual I highly recommend is Harold Cameron of HaroldSays. He has a blog - HaroldSays - that you can visit for assistance. Harold has devoted his full attention to helping folks with problems with business or government agencies. He does not charge for his assistance. Because this is all he does, he has gathered access to many corporate and government office contacts. His focus is positive and he will post a praise on his blog when he gains the cooperation of a business or agency when attempting to help someone. Because of Harold, I was able to get the attention of Circuit City executive offices, however we are still working on resolution at this time.

If you have any information about further consumer agencies that are helpful to consumers, please feel free to post them on this blog.

On another note, in the course of my billing problem with Cingular, I did find out that the FCC, which is supposed to be a watchdog for wireless phone companies, really does nothing. When the FCC receives a complaint about a wireless provider, they refer the complaint back to the wireless provider to investigate themselves. There is no investigation by the FCC. Wireless companies have free reign on what they choose to do to consumers. Basically the fox is watching the hen house on that one. I did write to our elected officials with respect to wireless phone companies during the time of Cingular double billing and threatening, however that did not go anywhere. I hope that someday, wireless providers will be regulated by the government. I'm sure this will do a lot to bring down the steep costs and improve customer service. There are just too many folks with a "hate" relationship with their wireless phone providers, however they are locked into service agreement with providers that know they have a captive audience.