Telemarketing tops state consumer complaints

Your mobile phone rings and the screen displays a local area code along with a number you don’t recognize.

There was a time when you might have answered that call. Now you just put your phone back into your pocket or purse.

You’re pretty sure it’s another annoying telemarketing robocall.

That scenario — a computer-generated call with a fake area code and recorded message that tells you your extended auto warranty is about to expire, or your auto insurance is inadequate, or you can get a better mortgage rate, or whatever — helped put telemarketing calls at No. 1 among the top 10 consumer complaints in Wisconsin in 2018.

The Wisconsin Department of Agriculture, Trade and Consumer Protection released its complaint list Thursday.

“Consumers are frustrated with the amount of unwanted calls that they receive,” Lara Sutherlin, administrator of the state agency, said in a statement. “At best, these calls are a disruptive nuisance. At worst, they are a threat to the personal and financial information that consumers work hard to protect.”

More than two of every five complaints DATCP received in 2018 were related to calls from unknown numbers, unwanted sales calls or scam calls. In all, there were 4,860 such complaints, or 17 percent more than 4,147 in 2017.

“A lot of these were robocalls,” said Jerad Albracht, a DATCP spokesman.

Are phone companies doing enough?

Sutherlin said Wisconsin residents have had some success against robocalls by using call-blocking mobile phone apps that send unknown calls to voicemail.

But there are other efforts, too.

“At the federal level and the industry level, they’re recognizing this as a technological problem and they’re trying to handle it as such,” Albracht said in an interview.

Consumer advocates contend phone companies should solve the problem, and federal lawmakers also have become involved. A bipartisan bill to attack the problem of “spoofed” robocalls — calls that use fake call identification — was reintroduced in the U.S. Senate in January. The bill, known as the Telephone Robocall Abuse Criminal Enforcement and Deterrence Act, would

put pressure on telephone services to come up with a way to stop unwanted robocalls.

Landlords a distant second

In all, the state’s Bureau of Consumer Protection and Bureau of Weights and Measures received 11,693 complaints last year, up about 4 percent from 11,212 a year earlier.

A distant second to telemarketing on the list was landlord-tenant complaints, at 1,188, 4 percent more than 1,141 in 2017. Complaint allegations mainly were about security deposit issues, with tenants claiming too much was withheld or that landlords failed to return deposit money when the lease ended.

Problems with telecommunications providers were the third-most prevalent complaint in 2018, but there were fewer than in 2017, at 681 and 763, respectively. Customers complained about a wide variety of issues, such as billing disputes, misleading presentations, unauthorized charges and performance issues, according to the state consumer protection agency.

Complaints about home improvement contractors finished fourth on the list, jumping 21 percent to 489 from 403 in 2017. Consumers alleged contractors failed to provide services promised under contract, charged for services or repairs that weren’t performed, failed to honor warranties or provided unsatisfactory workmanship, DATCP said.

The rest of the top 10 complaints were related to:

Medical services, with 255 complaints, up from 195 in 2017

Identity theft, which fell to 250 from 453

Motor vehicle repair, with 196, up from 182

Gas pump accuracy and datastealing credit card “skimmers,” 169, down from 232

Motor vehicle sales, 155, compared with 149

Fuel quality, 119, up slightly from

113.