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Consumer Complaints info2go 817 656-3099

Saturday, 08 March 2008 18:39

I recieved a phone call several months ago from a woman who asked for a third party’s address and phone number. I do know the third party, but of course I refused to give out personal information to anyone, never mind this person was a total stranger who refused to identify herself. She asked me to relay a message to the third party or his attorney about a legal matter before she turned it over to the court. Had she not woken me out of a deep sleep, with my caffeine low level indicator flashing, I would not have even agreed to accept a return phone number.

I ran into dead ends with every online reverse search I conducted. Finally I found a little information at 800notes.com which identified this as a collection agency. This information is not reliable enough to file a written complaint with the company. I did file a complaint with the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), and then with the Texas Attorney General Office, as instructed by the FTC. The Texas Attorney General Office maintains the database Debt Collector Search that lists all debt collection agencies or credit bureaus in Texas that have obtained a surety bond and filed a copy of the bond with the Office of the Secretary of State. Because I did not know the name of the company, or the exact location, I limited my search to Houston Texas, which I thought was the company home office. A search returned 291 companies. Using Internet Explorer’s "Find on this page" command, I did not locate the return phone number on the list.

I also searched for the company name in a second Texas Secretary of State database Credit Services Organizations and retrieve no records. "No records found: Please check your fields and try again."
I do not appreciate this type of a phone call, where a company attempts to use me to obtain information about a third party. I have a remote idea how this woman connected me to this third party, and I felt my privacy had been violated. I also perceived the mention of turning a legal matter over to the court as a threat.

The next time you have a consumer complaint, about anything, don’t sit there angry and frustrated. File a complaint! Please check some of the following links and let your government and other bureaucracies deal with the problem. Search or download the US Government’s 2008 Consumer Action Handbook. It contains a
variety of consumer topics as well as information on how and where to file a complaint. Consumer Services Guide, a project of Consumer Action, provides national information on consumer rights and complaint-handling agencies in Chinese, English, Korean, Spanish, Vietnamese and other languages. In the UK, Consumer Direct provides clear, practical consumer advice in English and Welsh. The Institute of Customer Service provides numerous links to British comsumer web sites.

Australian readers will want to check the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) and their Consumers Online Website. Search or download the Australian Consumer Handbook.

The Ministry of Consumer Affairs, Consumer Affairs New Zealand, maintains Links for government and other consumer organizations.

Industry Canada’s Consumer Information is a gateway of services and tools for Canadian’s related to fraud, scams, debt problems, and a variety of other consumer concerns. The Office of Consumer Affairs, a trusted source of consumer information and reliable research, advises consumers in English and French.

Don’t talk to a phone tree! Connect to a real person at a company with the Gethuman 500 database, or locate a company’s 800 number with the National Toll Free Directory.