The most common consumer complaints
And this year's winner as the most common consumer complaint is... identity theft!
That should be no surprise. Problems with fraudsters hijacking people's identity has topped the list of complaints for 15 straight years, according to the Federal Trade Commission, which on Friday released its latest figures on the biggest consumer kvetches.
The agency also reported that a related scam, in which crooks posing as others, most notably as IRS agents and other government officials, is now the third most reported complaint. So-called impostor complaints more than doubled between 2013 and 2014. Another recurrent problem -- debt collection.
Details on the kinds of issues affecting consumers are drawn from a database of complaints filed with FTC, including reports from a variety of law enforcement and consumer agencies.
Here are the top 10 consumer complaints, according to the FTC, along with the percentage of problems they account for.
- Identity theft (13 percent)
- Debt collection (11 percent)
- Imposter scams (11 percent)
- Telephone and mobile services (7 percent)
- Banks and lenders (5 percent)
- Prizes, sweepstakes and lotteries (4 percent)
- Auto-related (3 percent)
- Shop-at-home and catalog sales (3 percent)
- Television and electronic media (2 percent)
- Internet services (2 percent)
"While identity theft remains a huge issue, consumers should also keep a close eye out for impostor scams," Jessica Rich, director of the FTC's Bureau of Consumer Protection said in a statement. "Whether it's pretending to be the IRS during tax season, or making false promises of a lottery win, scammers are increasingly sophisticated in their efforts to deceive consumers, but the FTC will continue working to shut these scammers down."
While calls from impostors posing as government officials can be believable and scary, here are some tips to spot and avoid such scams:
- Resist demands to wire money or deposit on a prepaid debit card. Those are the hallmarks of a scam and something that no government agency will ask of you. If the caller says he's from the IRS and requires immediate payment via Western Union or MoneyGram, or asks you to load a prepaid card, hang up.
- Never pay to receive something. If the situation is turned around, and the caller is telling you that you're a winner rather than demanding payment after scaring you, the goal is the same. They want you to make a payment to them via wire or debit card, which is the same as handing over cash. No legitimate lottery or company awarding a prize will demand money upfront.
- Guard your personal information. Whether someone claims to be calling from the government or even from your bank, never give out private or financial information over the phone unless you're the one who initiated the call.
- Be wary of Caller ID. It is so easy these days for crooks to alter the way a phone number and other information appear on your Caller ID that you can't rely on it to know a call is real or a fake. In other words, the call could show up as "IRS" and show a Washington, D.C., number, but that doesn't mean that's really who's calling. Remember, the goal of the crooks is always the same: to get you to either make untraceable payments to them or to get you to reveal sensitive information.
