Absurd act by company to prevent negative review — violating the FCRA?


Absurd act by company to prevent negative review — violating the FCRA?

Absurd act by company to prevent negative review -- violating the FCRA?There is a remarkable story from Good Morning America and Yahoo! about a retailer — KlearGear.com — that has “fined” their customers $3500 for writing a negative review after giving their customers poor service.

Pretty absurd, right?

Stupid really.

But this company decided to leave “absurd” and “stupid” far behind in their rear view mirror.

These genuises decided to report on the customers’ credit reports that they owed $3500.

This caused all sorts of problems:

When the Palmers refused to pay the amount, KlearGear.com reported their “debt” to one or more credit reporting agencies. When the Palmers disputed the debt with several credit reporting agencies, KlearGear.com continued to maintain that the debt was owed and then demanded a $50 “dispute fee” because they attempted to dispute the debt, the couple says.

KlearGear.com did not respond to a request for comment.

Unable to afford an attorney to dispute the debt, the Palmers said the mark on their credit history affects their ability to obtain loans, most recently for a financing plan for a new furnace. As a result, last month the couple and their 3-year-old son were without heat for three weeks until they saved the $1,900 to buy a furnace.

“Utah in October gets very cold pretty quickly,” Jen Palmer said.

This is clearly false information.

When the dispute came back “verified” the simple step is to hire a lawyer who sues under the FCRA (Fair Credit Reporting Act).

Lawyers who do this work don’t charge up front fees — instead we only get paid when we win.

Thankfully a lawyer (Scott Michelman) from Public Citizen is helping them to fix this problem.

I’m still amazed at the arrogance and stupidity of some companies.

Here’s a thought — provide decent (even great!) customer service and you might be surprised what happens.

Continue to cheat and abuse people?

Well, don’t complain when you get hit with a lawsuit and have to pay a lot of money out…

Contact us if you have any questions.

If you live in Alabama and you’re dealing with this type of lawsuit, give us a call.

You can reach us by phone at 1-205-879-2447.

Or you can fill out a contact form and we will get in touch with you as soon as possible.

Thanks for reading, and have a great day!

-John Watts

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