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“We are aware of scams where the UT-Dallas name is used in an attempt to obtain personal information about the recipients,” university spokeswoman Katherine Morales tells me. “While it used the UT-Dallas name, it was not distributed by UT-Dallas computer systems.”

As readers of The Dallas Morning News Dave Lieber Watchdog column first learned, the threat to personal and business computers is that it takes only one gullible person to compromise an entire network. If you knew my business password, for instance, you could instantly impersonate me to the outside world.

You could write to all the people in my contacts, as me, and ask them to download something really bad on their computers to take over their machines for criminal purposes, install viruses and remove sensitive information. Or you could ask them to send you money in USD.

That’s why I want to tell you what Tom Cochran did last month. He’s the chief technology officer for Atlantic Media, which publishes The Atlantic magazine and other publications. Before that, Cochran was director of new media technologies at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.

Cochran pranked employees at the company, but it wasn’t for fun. He sent everyone on staff an email asking for their password. He didn’t want them to do it. He only wanted to see who would fall for it. Bad news — 123 staffers did what he didn’t want them to do.

Cochran scolded employees in a companywide email: “Across our entire company, 58% of us clicked the email after opening it. Wow. Fifty-eight percent! With those odds, all a scammer needs to do is craft an intriguing enough subject line and they have a great chance at getting your account information. Then, you’re hacked and so is Atlantic Media.”

In the company, 67 percent of corporate staff fell for it, and 73 percent of staffers at Quartz, an online magazine, tripped up, too.

“All it takes is one stolen password and we are hacked,” Cochran continued. “Then we could have a website defaced, Twitter account tweeting false information, financial information leaked, expose your sources and a lot more.”

Cochran tells me hacking is “the No. 1 drag on the digital economy. All this fraud and fear. You’re really only as secure as the weakest link in the company.”

He adds, “It’s not that you should be scared. The tools are available.”

The main tool is two-step authentication. This is important to know. In addition to signing in with your password, more websites, especially those for financial institutions and email accounts, are offering a secondary numeric password for entry.

You don’t have to memorize it. You get that password through your cellphone as either a text or a voice message during the sign-in process. Unless a hacker has your cellphone, he or she can’t get past the second step.

Cochran is proud that at Atlantic Media, everyone now uses two-step authentication. If it’s offered, take it. Don’t ever give out your password. And if you get an email from me saying I’m stuck on the other side of the planet and need USD, you know what not to do.

Avoid scams

Marcus Rogers, Purdue University computer professor, offers these self-protection tips:

•Never give up personal information to anyone who writes or calls seeking it. Most likely, he or she is a criminal.

•Don’t be fooled by an email or website that looks real. It’s easy to make copycat sites.

•Be mistrustful. When in doubt, use the phone to check if something is real. But don’t call the phone number in the email or on the website because that could be fake, too. Get the number elsewhere.

•If someone sends you a link, don’t click on it unless you know it’s real. Call or write to double-check its authenticity.
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Filed Under: Column, Privacy, Technology Issues Tagged With: Atlantic Media, computer security, cybersecurity, Dallas Morning News, DallasNews.com, Dave Lieber, Internet security, Marcus Rogers, Marina Trahan Martinez, stolen passwords, Tom Cochan, watchdog nation

Nationstar Mortgage loan company admits it failed customer

April 20, 2014 by Dave Lieber

Crazy. Absolutely crazy. Robin Reid can’t believe it. She signed up to refinance her home and here it is, six months later, and she’s still waiting. Excuse after excuse.

This isn’t some fly-by-night operator she’s dealing with, either. Nationstar Mortgage LLC in Lewisville, Texas is one of the biggest loan companies in America.

“Not pretty,” she says.

Reid is succinct. A journalist who worked for The Baltimore Sun and National Geographic, she doesn’t waste a word. When she complains, she tries to keep her comments tight, factual and positive. She’s gotten a lot of practice complaining, too.

“A morass of foolishness,” she says of her long march through the loan approval process.

A Nationstar senior vice president doesn’t disagree. “This is one that got away from us,” John Hoffmann admits.

As readers of The Dallas Morning News Dave Lieber Watchdog column first learned, Nationstar bought the mortgage on her Baltimore home last year and, as a get-acquainted gesture, offered her a lower rate. Good timing. Her adjustable rate loan is expiring this summer.

In January, a month after she applied, she wrote Nationstar: “Do you foresee any snags? I hope it’s all going OK. My fingers are crossed!!!”

Her loan officer’s reply: “Everything is in order on my end and I do not foresee any problems in completing the loan.”

Fingers crossed doesn’t always work.

She was promised everything would be completed by March, correspondence shows. After months went by, a supervisor told her there was a high volume of loans and the company had fallen behind.

Her bank wrote Reid to complain that Nationstar refused to provide necessary information “despite multiple requests for that information.”

She was outraged in April when Nationstar asked her for documents she sent the previous November.

The process stretched so long that her first appraisal expired, and she had to get another one. (Nationstar paid for it.)

Two days before The Watchdog waded into this mess, a Nationstar “escalations team leader” wrote Reid, “We are at a standstill with your file at this point.”

Now, for the first time, Nationstar has jumped on the fast track. A company employee told Reid in an email last week that Nationstar is waiting for one last document from her bank. To speed up the process, Nationstar wrote, it sent the bank an overnight envelope. That’s all Reid wanted from the start.

She’s lost $1,200, she says, because if she could have refinanced months ago as promised, she would have saved that much with a lower interest rate.

Company spokesman Hoffmann says: “There’s no way around this one. We didn’t do it. We didn’t handle it well at all.”

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What specifically went wrong?

“No good reason,” he replied, adding that Reid’s loan “should be wrapped up in a couple of days.” (That didn’t happen.)

Nationstar may have been distracted. In January, Nationstar acquired $215 billion in residential mortgage servicing rights from Bank of America. That means the company is adding another 1.3 million loans to its own portfolio of 1.2 million loans

The Texas attorney general’s office reports that Nationstar had 250 complaints lodged against it in the past two years. At the state office of its regulator, Nationstar has 275 complaints for the past eight years, according to the Texas Department of Savings and Mortgage Lending. That’s not considered a lot by associate general counsel Chris Schneider.

“Nationstar is huge, one of the largest mortgage originators and servicers in the country. In any operation that large with the volume they do, there are going to be complaints. We have received complaints against Nationstar, as we do for virtually every company in the business.”

What should people do in this situation? The Watchdog recommends flooding the zone. Reid did that. First, go to the company, to managers and executives. Like Reid, be tight, factual and positive. If that doesn’t work, do as Reid did and file complaints with the U.S. Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and her congressman’s office.

There’s also the Better Business Bureau, the attorney general of the home state of a company, the state mortgage regulator, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, which enforces fair lending laws, and, for good measure, the Federal Trade Commission.

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Filed Under: Bad Business, Column, Customer Service Issues Tagged With: Dallas Morning News, DallasNews.com, Dave Lieber, Marina Trahan Martinez, Nationstar Mortgage, watchdog nation

The Watchdog: Don’t be fooled by Acxiom’s data release

April 20, 2014 by Dave Lieber

An Arkansas company that collects information about us and then resells it to banks, retailers, insurance companies and others for a billion dollars a year in sales almost pulled a fast one on The Watchdog.

I was excited about the release of personal data by Acxiom on its free new website. I couldn’t wait to show you how to access your data so you can see what secrets a big-time data broker knows about you.

Great story: Your personal information released for the first time in history. What Big Brother keeps in his file.

As readers of The Dallas Morning News Dave Lieber Watchdog column first learned, then I studied why Acxiom did this. On the surface, the idea is that a watchdog columnist like me would brag on this new website. Wow. Cool. No corporate data broker ever did this before. How can you not respect Acxiom for being so transparent and revolutionary in the way it is suddenly treating us Americans?

You know, it almost worked.

A few things killed the positive vibe.

Turns out, Acxiom doesn’t have the purest of motives. Scott Howe, chief executive officer and president, has said in interviews that he wants his company to sit at the bargaining table when the federal government does what it so far has refused to do — set up regulations that show data brokers what they can do with information about us.

Hey, we’re open, the company’s message goes. We want you to see what we’re all about. “We are not going to get anywhere by hiding,” Howe told one reporter.

Oh really, sir? I went to the company’s new website — AboutTheData.com — and looked up my information. What I saw was a joke. This whole thing is a bogus public relations stunt. I’m not buying into it.

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The company’s information about me is mostly accurate. Acxiom knows the value of my house, the age of my youngest son and even my approximate income. But it also says I’m “interested” in the following areas: gourmet cooking, crafts, decorating and gardening. My wife is LOL when she reads that. (Who wants a watchdog doing that anyway? If I’m gourmet-cooking, making crafts, decorating and gardening, when would I investigate your problems?)

The problem for me is not that they got most things right and a few things comically wrong. My concern is what’s not in my report. My watchdog associate, Marina Trahan Martinez, showed me her personal report. It included her preferred political party, her recent online purchases and her family vehicles. My report didn’t include any of that information.

But that’s not all that’s missing. From my reading, I learned that Acxiom most likely possesses other information that it’s hiding from me.

The company uses shorthand slogans to categorize households — such as “Frugal Families” and “McMansions and Minivans,” The New York Times reported. My family’s nickname is left out.

The paper reported that Acxiom also sells descriptive phrases to customers about us with words such as “gambling,” “senior needs,” “smoker” and “adult with wealthy parents.”

Forbes reported that the company knows “some health topics of interest to you” such as diabetes or arthritis.

Other companies in the data broker business are said to collect information about sexual orientation, criminal and civil court records, credit history, health records and bank information.

Acxiom’s public disclosure only amounts to a sanitized version of a Big Brother file. This exercise is a feat of hocus-pocus, turning a glass of strong bourbon into a cup of milk. There’s no bite, no real privacy invasion, no truth to this data dump when compared with the type of information the company actually keeps.

I’d love to run all these thoughts by company leaders. I’ve been trying for two months to talk to them.

In July, the corporate communications manager answered that he would get in touch with me later. Last week, a company spokeswoman told me everyone is too busy. (Must be! Acxiom laid off 20 employees last month from its marketing division at Little Rock headquarters.)

I showed the AboutTheData.com website to Suku Nair, chairman of the Department of Computer Science and Engineering at Southern Methodist University. He’s not impressed.

“The site is not very secure,” he said. He’s right. To get your information, you type in only your name, address, date of birth and last four digits of your Social Security number. Think about that. Information you give all the time to others to confirm your identity is all that’s needed to enter this website.

Much of his personal information wasn’t correct, Nair said. The site allows you to edit your information and even opt out of Acxiom sharing your information with others. After this stunt, I’d recommend going to the site only if you want to opt out. Otherwise, don’t bother.

Nair instructs that by visiting AboutTheData.com and giving your personal details to enter, you confirm the latest information about yourself. You’re doing their work for them.

AT A GLANCE: Protect yourself

Learn some of what Acxiom knows about you at AboutTheData.com. Opt out of information sharing. Edit your data.

Remember, you can get a free credit report from each of the three credit bureaus once a year at annualcreditreport.com.

Read privacy notices from companies and opt out of sharing.

Don’t answer surveys or fill out cards for drawings with personal information.

To get your name off mailing lists, visit dmachoice.org. Click on “Email Opt Out Service” and “Register for EDDM” to stop receiving certain kinds of commercial mail.

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Filed Under: Bad Business, Column, Customer Service Issues, Privacy, Technology Issues Tagged With: Acxiom, Dallas Morning News, DallasNews.com, data release, Dave Lieber, Marina Trahan Martinez, personal data, personal information, Privacy, Scott Howe, watchdog nation

Watchdog Video Tip of the Day: What to do if the boss won’t pay you

April 19, 2014 by Dave Lieber

Watchdog Video Tip of the Day: What to do if your boss won’t pay you.

You work hard on a job but then you don’t get your paycheck. What are your rights?

Learn from Marina Trahan Martinez, The Dallas Morning News Watchdog Desk Administrator, how to be smart.

The Watchdog Video Tip of the Day, produced by DallasNews.com, is designed to solve a problem in less than a minute.

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The Watchdog: 5 tips to gain consumer power with insurance

February 2, 2014 by Dave Lieber

Frustrated that Texas insurance companies always seem to have the upper hand? Me, too. In recent months, I switched insurance companies for coverage of my car, my house, my health and my life.

My insurance shopping experience can be summed up by a famous line from Socrates, one of the original watchdogs: “I know nothing except the fact of my ignorance.”

Not being an expert on products or services you are about to buy is OK. The idea is to learn as much as possible before making a decision.

As readers of The Dallas Morning News Dave Lieber Watchdog column first learned, five years ago, I launched a consumer rights movement called Watchdog Nation. I show how easy it is to protect yourself before making a decision — if you know how to do it.

But if you make a bad decision when hiring a company or buying a product, it’s a lot easier than most people realize to fight back and win.

In that spirit, I want to share five Watchdog Nation recommendations designed to gain consumer power when dealing with insurance in Texas.

1. Seek help from state regulators. Say an insurance company refuses to pay what a policyholder believes she is entitled to. Or perhaps the company is unresponsive to her concerns. File an official complaint with the Texas Department of Insurance. A state insurance specialist will contact the company and request an explanation. Sometimes, the company reverses its decision.

In the past year, Texas regulators received 20,000 complaints. Of those, about 3,000 complainants celebrated when $24.7 million was returned to them in settlement claims that originally were rejected.

One of those who complained is Jane Heinz of Farmers Branch. She booked a cruise departing from Germany, but at the last moment the cruise was canceled because of flooding. Even though she bought trip insurance, the insurance company reimbursed her only for the cost of the lost cruise, not her transportation costs to and from Germany.

Heinz wanted to fight but didn’t know how. Following my suggestion, she filed a complaint. Texas regulators contacted the company.

The other day I heard the results: “They are going to pay our claim for $1,753,” she said.

Bam! Another victory.

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2. Visit the HelpInsure.com website. This is one of Texas’ best-kept secrets. State insurance officials manage this website to help Texans shop for auto, commercial and residential property insurance. It’s free.

Compare the policies of all companies licensed to sell in Texas. See what they cover and what they don’t. Verify the record of an insurance agent. Check out a company’s status. All that’s possible on this easy-to-navigate website.

3. Hire a public adjuster. Here’s something I wish I had known when I fought my homeowners insurance company over a leak in my laundry room floor. When the insurance company’s adjuster, citing the Texas Almanac, blamed shifting soil in North Texas for my leak, I knew that was an easy out for him. I bellyached, but I didn’t know how to fight back.

I should have hired a public adjuster. This is someone who works on behalf of a residential or commercial property owner to negotiate with an insurance company for a better settlement on a claim. They study the policy, do research and argue the case.

There aren’t many in Texas, perhaps about 600 active adjusters. Their usual fee is 10 percent of a settlement claim. Texas requires that a public adjuster be licensed. One way to find them is through the Texas Association of Public Insurance Adjusters, MyTapia.org.

4. Don’t ask questions about your auto insurance. Last month, I told you about a new state law that prohibits companies from taking a policyholder’s questions about a potential claim and using that information to raise rates, premiums or deductibles for that customer. Customers get penalized even if they don’t make a claim.

Now I understand that this only pertains to homeowners insurance, not auto insurance. Credit goes to journalist John Sepulvado of OnlineAutoInsurance.com for showing me this.

This means you shouldn’t ask questions about your auto policy. Even if you don’t file a claim, your rates could go up. Ask all you want about homeowners insurance because the new law protects that.

5. Talk to a lawyer. Mistreated? Underpaid in your settlement offer? When all else fails and you know you’re getting a bum deal, find a local Perry Mason.

Most insurance settlements begin with a lowball offer, and too many people take that initial offer, says Alex Winslow of Texas Watch, which eyeballs the insurance industry in Austin. “There’s a documented strategy on the part of some insurance companies to deny, delay, underpay legitimate claims. They hope they’re going to wear you down and you’ll go away,” he says.

“And if they’re doing that and treating you unfairly, you have some legal recourse. There are real penalties that insurance companies face if they’re doing that.”

One way to find a lawyer is through the National Association of Consumer Advocates, www.naca.net.

Texas Department of Insurance consumer help line: 1-800-252-3439

Shop for insurance: www.HelpInsure.com

Find a public adjuster: www.MyTapia.org

Look for a lawyer: www.naca.net

Are you tired of fighting the bank, the credit card company, the electric company and the phone company? They can be worse than scammers the way they treat customers. A popular book, Dave Lieber’s Watchdog Nation: Bite Back When Businesses and Scammers Do You Wrong, shows you how to fight back — and win! The book is available at WatchdogNation.com as a hardcover, CD audio book, e-book and hey, what else do you need? The author is The Watchdog columnist for The Dallas Morning News. Visit our store. Now revised and expanded, the book won two national book awards for social change. Twitter @DaveLieber

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Filed Under: Column, Customer Service Issues Tagged With: Dallas Morning News, DallasNews.com, Dave Lieber, insurance shopping, Marina Trahan Martinez, watchdog nation

Texas merchants can’t add surcharges for credit, debit cards

February 1, 2014 by Dave Lieber

The Lone Star State is one of only 10 in the nation that prohibit merchants from charging swipe fees for credit card sales. For the 40 other states, merchants can charge up to 4 percent in extra “convenience fees.”

The Legislature passed a law in 2013 giving real enforcement power to state regulators to go after rogue merchants who charge extra.

It gets even better. The Legislature also passed a law prohibiting the same kind of surcharges on debit cards, too.

All hail the mighty pro-consumer Texas Legislature. (I never got to write those words before.)

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As readers of The Dallas Morning News Dave Lieber Watchdog column first learned, these two obscure bills passed in 2013 will save Texans in overcharges. If you see a merchant charging extra for credit or debit use, take a photograph of a sign proving the illegal surcharge. Or use a receipt as evidence.

File a complaint with the Texas Office of Consumer Credit Commissioner, which, for the first time because of the new law, is able to use its field agents, investigators and legal staff to go after violators.

“If we receive a complaint, we’ll investigate,” promises Rudy Aguilar, director of the OCCC. Previously, his office sent warning letters because it wasn’t allowed do more.

The no-surcharge law has been on the books for almost 30 years, but no one can remember anyone getting fined. Now administrative financial penalties are on the table, too.

The law was sponsored by state Rep. Cindy Burkett, R-Sunnyvale. She told me state regulators asked for her help to strengthen their enforcement abilities.

A second bill by state Rep. Jose Menendez, D-San Antonio, places debit cards under protective cover, too.

“We worked our backsides off to make that pass,” says Steve Scurlock, executive vice president of Independent Bankers Association of Texas.

“I’m amazed watching the younger people that never have cash. Ever. So it’s really become the banking system of sorts.”

His group supported the changes because they allow consumers and regulators “to make sure people were doing what the law said.”

Merchants can still require a minimum purchase of $10 before a credit card can be used, according to a federal rule. But nobody is allowed to set a minimum purchase level for using a debit card. That comes directly out of the card owner’s account.

There is one exception to the ban on these surcharges. A certain class of “merchant” is allowed to place surcharges on its invoices for using a credit card.

That merchant? Government. Local, county, school district and state government can tack on charges for credit cards for taxes, fees, licenses and other government transactions. Nobody should be surprised by that.

For everybody else, it’s time to start complaining to the Office to Consumer Credit Commissioner.

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Filed Under: Bad Business, Column, Customer Service Issues Tagged With: credit card surcharge, Dallas Morning News, DallasNews.com, Dave Lieber, debit card fees, debit card surcharge, Marina Trahan Martinez, watchdog nation

The Watchdog: AT&T retiree asks if she’s victim of a bait-and-switch

January 20, 2014 by Dave Lieber

Virginia Bowers was once in love, but not anymore. Her paramour was her company, Southwestern Bell, where she worked as a manager for almost three decades. The company helped her raise three children as a single mom.

“I was enamored with the security,” she says.

No more. Dealing with her old Southwestern Bell, now flying under the AT&T flag after Southwestern purchased AT&T in 2005, is like wrangling with an ex-spouse, she says.

“Every call with them is frustrating,” she says about her customer service experiences. On one recent call, she confesses regretfully, “I ended that phone call screaming at the man.”

As readers of The Dallas Morning News Dave Lieber Watchdog column first learned, Bowers’ breakup started eight months ago. Bowers gets a letter from AT&T telling her she needs to upgrade her service. Well, that’s not how AT&T puts it. AT&T writes that it is “proactively transitioning some customers who live in your area to the advanced AT&T U-verse network with fiber-optic technology.”

Bowers already has a sweet deal for Internet service: DSL cable for $19.99 a month — for life. The letter, though, promises, “The change is free.”

She calls to ask the new monthly price. She learns it’s even lower — $15 a month. She asks several times if that’s the true price. A few days later, she calls again and talks to someone else. She double- checks the price one more time. Everyone assures her: $15 a month.

A sweeter deal, so she gives the OK. Her Internet service is disconnected. The company installs a new modem setup. For the first months, her bill is the promised $15.

Then Bowers gets another letter. The company regrets that it must share bad news. An audit shows that she has been charged the wrong amount. She’s paying the active managers’ rate when she should pay the retired managers’ rate. Her new rate is higher. Forty dollars a month. A jump from $15 to $40 — a 167 percent increase.

She protests. AT&T gives her a $30 credit. That’s the equivalent of an air kiss. Bowers is out $300 a year in extra charges. Even if she wants to go back to her old DSL service, the company says she can’t.

“Does this sound like entrapment or bait and switch to you?” she asks The Watchdog.

Sounds like a potential case of deceptive advertising. The Texas Deceptive Trade Practices Act defines that as presenting a false statement about “the cost or character” of a product, service or financial security for sale.

AT&T calls it an unintentional error. The company caught the mistake. Now the correct price is being charged.

AT&T spokesman Dale Ingram says the company is treating Bowers fairly: “She had an active manager discount for almost a year. We didn’t go back and charge for that.”

He adds, “We’re applying the correct discount moving forward as a retired manager, and again, we have apologized.”

Sigh. Shouldn’t a promised price that is accepted by a customer stamp a deal as final? You’d think so, especially one involving a veteran former employee.

This is no surprise to AT&T critic John Spiller, who says AT&T employees sometimes struggle to present accurate facts to customers when making a sales pitch. Spiller wrote a 2011 tell-all book, The Ampersand Diaries: AT&T and Life Lessons Learned from the Trenches of an American Icon.

“They do the same thing to their employees, past or present, that they do to their customers,” he says. “Say one thing. Do another. Very, very common.”

Bowers actually faces two AT&T price increases. The bill for her AT&T cellphone went up 61 cents on May 1, as it did for millions of other customers. AT&T says the new charge will help cover company expenses.

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It was “a move that could bring in more than a half-billion dollars in annual revenue to the telecom giant,”The Wall Street Journal reported. (Other phone companies charge similar administrative fees.)

Bowers has two obvious options. She can file a complaint with the Texas attorney general’s office, which examines claims of deceptive advertising. She can also file a small-claims court lawsuit against AT&T for $300 to cover her lost money for a year and other added expenses. She doesn’t need a lawyer for small claims. But she needs proof of the deception, preferably in writing, photos or recordings.

How sad that Bowers’ longtime affection for her former company has come to this. She speaks nostalgically of “the universal relationship” the phone company once had with its customers.

“They frittered it away,” she says.

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Filed Under: Bad Business, Column, Customer Service Issues, Technology Issues, Utilities Tagged With: Ampersand Diaries, AT&T overcharge, Dallas Morning News, DallasNews.com, Dave Lieber, John Spiller, Marina Trahan Martinez, watchdog nation

Watchdog Video Tip of the Day: How to pick a cruise company

January 20, 2014 by Dave Lieber

Check out that cruise company before you pony up the big bucks.

The Dallas Morning News Watchdog Desk administrator Marina Trahan Martinez shows you how.

The Watchdog Video Tip of the Day, produced by DallasNews.com, is designed to solve a problem in less than a minute. Read more Watchdog reports here.

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More Watchdog Nation News:

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Enterprise Rent-A-Car repair bills shock customers

January 19, 2014 by Dave Lieber

Christina Morales got sideswiped in a small-time fender-bender with another car. What came next was typical: Getting the insurance company’s approval to pay for a rental car and then driving the rental car while the old car was in a body shop for repairs.

For Morales, a 29-year-old nurse, this little chore ended badly. She found herself in a faceoff with Enterprise Holdings, owner of Enterprise Rent-A-Car, the rental company she used. EH also owns Alamo Rent A Car and National Car Rental.

The company accused Morales of getting into an accident with her rental truck. She received a pay-or-else invoice for $1,000 in repairs and $100 for “administrative fees.”

She knew that was wrong. She was never in an accident. She began to research on the Internet and found dozens of similar customer accounts.

File 2009/The Associated Press

(Half of all car rental complaints made to the Texas Attorney General’s Office in recent years came from Enterprise Rent-A-Car customers, The Dallas Morning News reported in March.)

As readers of The Dallas Morning News Dave Lieber Watchdog column first learned,, she found the work of my predecessor, Problem Solver Katie Fairbank, who wrote a series of columns about customers who claimed the same. I’ve studied and written about other people who said they were charged for accidents they didn’t know about, too.

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A close examination of Morales’ case shows the company is breaking its own protocols for handling these situations. EH executives are aware of public criticism of their damage claims units, but they say they must protect their fleet.

“The common phrase we hear from customers is, ‘I didn’t do it,’ ” said Roger Van Horn, vice president for corporate loss control. “… Basically, what we’re saying is we gave it to you. There was no damage on it. You returned it. There was damage on it. It happened while it was in your possession, and therefore, you’re responsible.”

As soon as he concluded, Christine Conrad Cavallini, vice president for corporate communication and public relations, jumped in: “That’s not to say we have not made a mistake before.”

Or in the case of Morales’ rental, a series of mistakes.

Conrad Cavallini talked about a new initiative to soften the blow. An Enterprise representative is now required to call a customer “to reach out and discuss” a claim before paperwork is filed.

That didn’t happen with Morales. No one contacted her until she got the claim letter last month.

Conrad Cavallini said she wants customers to reach out to the company when they discover serious problems. Nobody answered Morales’ letter laying out her facts and seeking information from the company.

Morales discovered other problems. She said Enterprise employees faked the amount of miles she drove. The return slip for the vehicle shows that in two weeks, she drove almost 17,000 miles. (The starting mileage number is crossed out with a second smaller one handwritten in.)

“I would have had to drive to South America three times,” she said, when she only used the vehicle for a daily 40-mile roundtrip commute.

The return slip states in large, handwritten letters, “No damage on truck.” Yet she was charged for damage two weeks after the truck’s return.

She questions whether the photo of proof the company sent her is of the truck she rented. Other Enterprise customers have told me that the company sent them a photo of a damaged car different from theirs.

The company blames the confusion on this: Morales’ mother dropped the truck off at the end of two weeks. The company said that’s against the rules, but Morales said she called the branch office and received permission for her mother to drop off the car.

After The Watchdog intervened, the company released a statement: “What happened is that an unauthorized driver (the renter’s mother) returned the car and confused our employee, and, as a result, the employee failed to point out the visible damage at the time.

“As a result of the confusion and delays, we are dropping the claim. However, please stress to this customer the importance of allowing only authorized drivers to operate rental cars, even if only returning the vehicle.”

The Dallas Morning News reported in March that half of all car rental complaints at the Texas attorney general’s office in recent years came from Enterprise customers.

My take: When picking up a car, make written notations on the company paperwork of all damage found. Keep a copy. Also, when picking up and dropping off, use a smartphone camera to video record and photograph all angles of a car.

“We’re all trusting of one another,” Morales said. “These are hard times right now. Now we can’t even trust the people we’re buying from or getting service from? When can we trust people?”

TIP: How to fix this problem: Watchdog Dave Lieber suggests if you have this problem, file a complaint with: 1) the Missouri Attorney General, 2) the attorney general of your home state, 3) the Better Business Bureau, 4) the Federal Trade Commission. And remember to always take photos and video of your rental car both BEFORE and AFTER your rental.

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Filed Under: Bad Business, Column, Customer Service Issues Tagged With: Dallas Morning News, DallasNews.com, Dave Lieber, Enteprise Rent-a-Car repair bill, Enterprise rental car repair bill, Marina Trahan Martinez, watchdog nation

Watchdog Video Tip of the day: A school mistreats your child

January 19, 2014 by Dave Lieber

A school is mistreating your child, and you want to learn more so you can fight the system.

The Dallas Morning News The Watchdog columnist Dave Lieber shows you how to file an open records request.

The Watchdog Video Tip of the Day, produced by DallasNews.com, is designed to solve a problem in less than a minute. See more free Watchdog reports here.

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