Elliott Advocacy is a nonprofit organization that mediates cases between consumers and businesses. These are commentary articles that detail our efforts and provide educational information for consumers.
Last week some of you called for my head after I disclosed that my teenage daughter threatened to hack my computer. Why, the nerve of that girl! One commenter, who demanded that I delete the offending story, scolded me for being a bad parent.
My response? That’s not bad parenting.
Before passwords got complicated, and before the massive data breaches scared the living daylights out of us, LastPass was the perfect app for remembering my login information. It stored all of my passwords on my laptop and recalled them securely whenever I needed them.
Until one day, it didn’t.
In a confessional blog post that shocked some of you last week, I told you about how a company called BLD Resume conned my son out of almost $500. I also shared some small but important changes in my personal finances that will ensure no one rips us off again. I have an update that might surprise you as much as the original story.
With the unemployment rate above 10 percent, it makes sense to freshen up your resume now. But before you do, beware of what some have called the BLD Resume scam, which my son fell for and which ended up costing me almost $500.
Douglas Quara wants to know why we need consumer advocates — and maybe you do, too.
“I love that you help people,” he wrote in an email.
Several days before his trip to Italy, Robert Arbanas got an email informing him that his hotel was overbooked. A manager promised him a refund. But months later Arbanas is still waiting. Can we help?
It used to be a reliable money-saving car rental trick: Reserve a vehicle at an off-airport location and take an Uber or taxi over. You can easily knock off 10 percent or more in airport fees.
Unfortunately, that loophole is closing.
There’s an intruder in Linda Jones’s apartment. She thinks she’s entitled to a refund from Booking.com for the inconvenience. But you will never — not in a million years — guess how this case resolves.
Her problem is about more than travel safety and corporate intransigence. It’s about the power of a single word. In this case, it’s an email address.
What if your train ride in a comfy sleeper compartment turns into an unpleasant bus ride? That’s what happened to David Papay on a recent overnight journey from Paris to Venice on Thello, a European rail company.
Now Papay is asking for help retrieving the refund he was promised from a Thello employee.
If your refrigerator stops working after just two years, shouldn’t the manufacturer replace it? That’s the question for today. Brent Wilkinson just wants Sears to replace his broken refrigerator. Can we help?
