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Hernando Today

Flimflam: An American Pastime

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By JOHN REINIERS

Published: June 14, 2008

Whatever you want to call it – to cheat, hoodwink, victimize, bamboozle, misrepresent – and the list goes on; flimflamming customers is alive and well in the U.S. We are a nation of crooks. This is a difficult area of the law because very often it's a swearing match, or the prosecuting witness is simply simple (dumb if you like) and never really knew what was going on. Usually, the seller has superior knowledge. What seems to be rampant nowadays is misrepresentation at the point of a sale where a service tied to a product is involved.

Recently, my wife went to buy a headset for her cell phone from a well known local cell phone company. The clerk opened three different packages before finding one that fit, and then charged it to her debit card before checking to see if it worked. It didn't. My wife handed it back, there at the point of sale, but he said he had no authority to credit my wife's card – that this authority had to come from home office; that it would take a few days. It never happened.

I complained to the Better Business Bureau – which is like the United Nations. They have no authority. They depend on the integrity of the vendor. The store owner said the headset became a "no return item" because it had been unwrapped. Of course. The clerk unwrapped it. It never left the store. Oh well. Chalk one up for the bad guys.

The last straw happened this week. I had taken my son's car to a car care business on Spring Hill Drive. I was hanging around and heard the manager tell a customer there was nothing wrong with her car. They had just finished inspecting it. The woman had received an estimate for $1,000 from another business detailing all the things that needed repair. A little voice in her ear told her something wasn't right and to get a second opinion! It's a good thing she did. She was being scammed.

Now here's the part that is hard to believe. They finished working on my son's car, and the next day I took it to a well known tire store for two rear tires. I was asked if I wanted a wheel alignment. I said "no." (I didn't tell him that I had just had it done the day before along with some other major service work.) They put the tires on right away, but didn't bring it out front. I noticed the hood had been up for about fifteen minutes but nobody was around the car.

I finally asked why the delay, and why the hood was up when I only had two rear tires replaced. The service writer informed me they were doing their routine inspection. He then had my son's car taken out front and handed me a "to do" list – not a formal estimate on a company form. And guess what? It listed all the work that I had just had done, or items checked just the day before, except the wheel alignment! I drove over to my regular company and showed them the list. He shrugged his shoulders and said something like, "these guys have a quota they have to meet." He couldn't figure out why the wheel alignment wasn't on the list.

Has it come to this – or has it always been this way? Everyone has a story to tell about being cheated – even retail employers. It seems as though employees are stealing stuff off the shelves faster than the customers. Economic populists call the "fat cat" corporations dishonest – and some are, but they never talk about how everyone is scamming the system.

Here's an idea that would send a message up the economic food chain: Have law enforcement adopt "Compstat," (short for Computer statistics) Professor George L. Kelling's and Police Chief William Bratton's law enforcement policy which made Rudy Giuliani famous. The theory is that it is easier to solve a small problem before it becomes a big problem; that weekly crime-control accountability meetings put precinct commanders on the spot as they get grilled for results on the small stuff. After "Compstat" was initiated in New York City, which was once the crime capital of the world, it enjoyed a drop in crime unmatched in the rest of the country. Cops started focusing on misdemeanors – graffiti, panhandlers, petty theft and the like, and slowly serious crimes started to drop. This idea has been adopted by other cities. Communities have been strengthened.

Adopt a similar zero tolerance policy towards crooked retailers, and require deputies to investigate and report, similar to "Compstat," on citizen complaints of being flimflammed. Encourage citizens to report to law enforcement, and the media to publicize such crooked activities. Discretion would be necessary, but names do not have to be used. Use a scorecard to publish these alleged crimes by neighborhood or zones.

We are incensed by crooked politicians and consumed with hatred for large corporations. Maybe if we started at the bottom, a message of integrity would percolate up the economic food chain and restore decent standards of behavior which would diminish more serious corporate and political crimes.

Let's face it. If victims of fraud at the grassroots level have already given up, it's a sign no one, including law enforcement cares, and invites more of the same conduct. It never ends.

John Reiniers writes regularly for Hernando Today. He lives in Spring Hill.

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