[function_seven]

> Where do people get their info from to just go with a "time to contact the FTC"? If feels like the equivalent of people threatening they will contact the BBB.

I'm well aware of how toothless and irrelevant BBB is these days. ("Yelp for old people"). Almost nobody visits BBB before making a decision, only after a bad experience. Given that, a business with a bad grade there probably doesn't feel much of a sting.

But I'm totally unfamiliar with FTC's power or purview. Is involving them on something like this a waste of time because of the dollar amount? I don't expect they would recover the money, or mediate a dispute. But I think the author is coming at it from the angle that the other party would rather not rack up complaints at all. Especially if they could get other affiliates to follow suit.

I work in telecom, and complaints to the Public Utilities Commission are treated seriously within my company (and in the wider industry AFAIK). We really do not want customers to file any. When a customer mentions the PUC at all, we take them seriously enough to get some more eyes on their problem.

My guess is that the author's checklist includes small claims as the next step after the FTC complaint. Or maybe they just stop at the FTC complaint and consider a lawsuit—even if small claims—to not be worth it for the amount involved.

[kevin_nisbet]

> I work in telecom, and complaints to the Public Utilities Commission are treated seriously within my company (and in the wider industry AFAIK). We really do not want customers to file any. When a customer mentions the PUC at all, we take them seriously enough to get some more eyes on their problem.

The consumer protection reporters for the new channel hanging around the headquarters also tend to grab a lot of attention in my experience. Happened once or twice that I remember where it was drop everything and solve the problem before the report goes out.

[rmason]

Actually I do visit the BBB if I am dealing with a new and unknown merchant before making a purchase. I also do searches with the business and add the words dispute, ripoff and problems. It's amazing what you learn.

Now if you don't find anything that doesn't mean there won't be problems. But if you do it's like a flashing red light on the dashboard to back away.

[colechristensen]

If it’s a merchant, just use a credit card. Payment processors don’t like fraud, and it’s one phone call to report a disputed charge. Disputes come out of the merchants pocket and then their rates go up or they are dropped by the processor. You also benefit everyone else by finding and hurting the bad merchant.

[sandermvanvliet]

I had quite a poor experience with this recently. Found out that there was a recurring charge from a website I had no relation with whatsoever, upon reporting this to my bank the answers were: - Contact the site (I had, got stonewalled) - No we can’t block that - Just block your card and ask for a new one

Ultimately I got things resolved and money was paid back by the site because of relentless emailing and keeping factual (like the article talks about) that resolved it. Needless to say the bank wasn’t real helpful so “just use a credit card” doesn’t quite seem to work, at least in my experience. (This was in NL btw, not US)

[colechristensen]

Maybe you were using the wrong language?

You shouldn't try to block transactions when something you never did shows up, you should report it as fraud. If they got your number, somebody else probably has it too. Trying to "block" probably got you put in the wrong pipeline.

[gvb]

What @colechristensen said.

I had a similar experience with a (quite popular but not google) website provider that I had a relationship with and had given them my CC. At some point my account credentials went invalid - I could not do a password recovery no matter what I tried. Since I could not log in, I could not cancel the subscription. I emailed them and got no response. I could not contact "customer service" because I had to log into the site in order to do that.

After two years(!) of charges (charged once a year) and no responses, I got fed up and contested the most recent charge on my CC. I was contacted via email the next day by a customer service representative who was pretty unhappy with the chargeback and threatened me with cancelling my account. Exactly what I wanted - problem solved!