Complaint Review: Consumer Research Corporation

I began getting emails from this outfit calling itself "Consumer Research Corporation. They provide NO contact or ddress info on their website, they are very cagey about that, but I pride myself in my arduous detective work, and I post the info here for all to see:

The Consumer Research Corporation is at 3830 Forest Drive #207, Columbia SC 29204. There was no phone info I could find but I will keep looking.

The emails promised you a free Dell Notbook---which I was struggling to get as a graduation gift for my daughter---if you would agree to test and evaluate products for their clients.

There is a complicated, multi page sign up program---but the hook is, at first you are told that you have to complete two offers on the first page and then 2 offers on the second page---which are relatively low cost trials like Video Professor, Columbia House, etc.

Only AFTER you are signed up for those, are you informed that there is a notorious page 3----with offers that you must complete that can come to several hundred, even thousands of dollars!

It becomes obvious that you are NEVER going to get the laptop, and even if you do you will have spent so much to get the "free" laptop that to call it a "free" offer is nothing short of criminal.

Also, cancellation is notoriously Difficult. If you try emailing the company to complain you get back an autoreponse. I finally got a Human email from them only after I told them I was contacting the State Attorney General of South Carolina about them---which in fact I have done.

So I offer this report as a word to the wise: this company appears to be offering a legitimate way to get free products, but there is nothing legit about their offers or the way they advertise.

I reject the notion that we all must expect companies to be crooked and anyone who expects honesty is a fool. Make noise! If enough of us MAKE NOISE when we get ripped off, companies will have to stop doing it. Like rapists, they rely on their victims' sense of shame to keep going.

Joanne
Skokie, Illinois
U.S.A.