Warranty scams continue to find victims
The calls and postcards keep coming, so I wanted to remind you about this scam that just won't go away.
A few months ago, I met Ann Topolinksi of Seattle, who had just purchased a shiny new Toyota Prius. It came with a 3-year, 36,000-mile warranty. So she was quite surprised to get a recorded message about her extended warranty a few weeks ago.
"They were telling me that my extended warranty had expired and it was unsafe for me to be on the road without an extended warranty," she said. "Now the kicker is, I've never had an extended warranty on anything, anything."
The Better Business Bureau of St. Louis says there are at least 90 companies in Missouri sending out postcards and cold-calling people, both at their homes and on their cell phones, pitching these car warranties.
This spring, the Missouri state attorney general sued several of those companies, claiming they used "misrepresentation and deception" to generate sales.
"Many consumers - confused, but not wanting their car warranties to expire - went ahead and purchased the new - but, in most cases, unneeded - service contract the company was hawking," said Attorney General Jay Nixon.
Luckily, Topolinski didn't take the bait even though she got several calls.
"And so that's when I thought, I'm going to call Herb Weisbaum and I'm going to tell him these people are alive and well, and they're doing their scammy things.
"I feel that this is really wrong. They're just trying to cheat me and steal my money," she said.
People who were tricked into buying one of these extended warranties and tried to cancel complain they could not get their money back or only received a partial refund.
The Topolinskis have their home phone number on the national Do Not Call List, so they should never have gotten these sales calls.
The con artists making the calls are also dialing cell phones - a federal violation, at all hours of the day and night, which is another federal violation.
If you received one of these sales calls, and you're on the Do Not Call List, you should file a complaint with the Federal Trade Commission. You can fill out a form
here.
Previous coverage:
Shady warranty pitches continue to pour in
A few months ago, I met Ann Topolinksi of Seattle, who had just purchased a shiny new Toyota Prius. It came with a 3-year, 36,000-mile warranty. So she was quite surprised to get a recorded message about her extended warranty a few weeks ago.
"They were telling me that my extended warranty had expired and it was unsafe for me to be on the road without an extended warranty," she said. "Now the kicker is, I've never had an extended warranty on anything, anything."
The Better Business Bureau of St. Louis says there are at least 90 companies in Missouri sending out postcards and cold-calling people, both at their homes and on their cell phones, pitching these car warranties.
This spring, the Missouri state attorney general sued several of those companies, claiming they used "misrepresentation and deception" to generate sales.
"Many consumers - confused, but not wanting their car warranties to expire - went ahead and purchased the new - but, in most cases, unneeded - service contract the company was hawking," said Attorney General Jay Nixon.
Luckily, Topolinski didn't take the bait even though she got several calls.
"And so that's when I thought, I'm going to call Herb Weisbaum and I'm going to tell him these people are alive and well, and they're doing their scammy things.
"I feel that this is really wrong. They're just trying to cheat me and steal my money," she said.
People who were tricked into buying one of these extended warranties and tried to cancel complain they could not get their money back or only received a partial refund.
The Topolinskis have their home phone number on the national Do Not Call List, so they should never have gotten these sales calls.
The con artists making the calls are also dialing cell phones - a federal violation, at all hours of the day and night, which is another federal violation.
If you received one of these sales calls, and you're on the Do Not Call List, you should file a complaint with the Federal Trade Commission. You can fill out a form
here.
Previous coverage:
Shady warranty pitches continue to pour in