Consumer Complaints

I hear from many consumers who say they have had their fill with the advertising and promotional industry that seems to think the American Consumers are complete idiots.

Prospective buyers say: "I will not fall for the same trick again", when you say in big type SALE and then is small print you say after a $100 rebate that will take weeks of filing paperwork and then you only have a 50-50 chance that you will get the rebate.� Many customers have told me they never got their rebate.

Also, TV news watchers say they have had it with TV news operations that tease important stories all day but will not use the time to give you the real meaning of the story. Like CBS-2 in LA �some years ago, they teased "children killed in a school bus accident, details on the new tonight at 11."� Well the real story was that there was a school bus accident and one child was killed but it was not in LA, or California, or anywhere on the West Coast as was inferred, but it was in Ohio, which you did not find out until the Six O'Clock News.�� Parents were calling schools all over the LA area trying to find out if their children had been on the school bus. �� NBC-4 in LA had a promo-headline on their morning news that said the US Consumer Product Safety Commission had recalled a toy that can burn children and has burned children, and stay tuned for the news tonight and find out what toy.�� All they had to say was it is a toy stove and we will tell you more on the news tonight. �That way the parents would know what toy was the problem, and not make you wait until the nightly news.� News promo-teases seem to be a game for some newsrooms.

Shelf signs in grocery stores can drive you up the wall, what price applies to what product?� Example at Rite Aid there was a big yellow shelf sign that said �tomato soup, 2 for $1.�� It was right under the Campbell Soup cans.� But in the very small fine print it said �Rite Aid tomato soup.��� Perhaps the stocker can't read the small print either.

"Bait and Switch" also seems to be coming back.� You see it in car ads, "one at this price."� I was waiting with a camera crew when a dealership opened on Thursday morning of the beginning of the sale.� I asked to see the car with the great low price that they said they had one at that price.� At first the salesman said it must have been sold.� I informed him the sales started today and they just opened.� So he looked around and could not find it, and then he checked the computer.� He still could not find that car in stock.� There was a beautiful picture of it in the newspaper ad. ��Finally after about an hour and the sales manager getting into the act, they found the car listed as a new arrival at the Port of LA.�� We went down to a port parking lot and looked at it.� It was dirty and certainly not ready for a showroom appearance. �It was a clear "Bait and Switch" advertisement.

I have to shake my head at those signs that say "Important Consumer Information." Then the information is printed in small print and the sign is way up high behind the counter at the pharmacy where no one could see it, to read it.�� I asked someone at a pharmacy what does that important consumer sign say, and she said, I don't know I can't reach it.

Then there are the Warrantee Agreements that are four or five or six pages and they are written in "legalese" that no one even an attorney could understand.� The clerk always says you don't have to read all that, it just says if it doesn't work, bring it back and we will give you a new one.� That�s NOT what most warrantees say.� In fact one major appliance story's multi page warrantee ended by saying; after four-years of you trying to get the product fixed, the store had the right to void the entire warrantee.� You would end up with nothing.

There is the situation where there are three customers waiting in line to be helped and five or six employees chatting or just walking around behind the counter.� The customers can not get the employees to make eye contact with them.� We know one thing, they do not own the store.

This is a consumer complaint about police officers.� When you have broken down at the side of the road, or you have had a fender bender, some police units will just pass you by or turn a block before they would have to pass you.�� Why would this happen? Some cops would say we are on an emergency call, but they did not have their emergency lights on or the siren.� Why would they not stop?� An accident can cause the officer a lot of paperwork and if it is at the end of his or her shift and he has things to do, then you get passed by.� (Now let me make it clear that I know officers who would go out of their way to stop and help a motorist.)� The problem is that there are those who will not.� I guess they don�t understand that as taxpayers we have employed them and we are the customer.

And finally I hear from many newspaper subscribers who laugh at the TV commercials where the LA Times or the LA Daily News is thrown on your porch.� Consumers tell me if it gets to your driveway you are lucky.�� My newspapers used to end up in the middle of the culdasac and the neighbors had to sort them out. �The LA Times is doing better now they hit the street gutter.

Filed February 11, 2007, by Judd McIlvain.