What are we griping about?

Dallas-Fort Worth area generates the most consumer complaints in Texas

Credit card fraud makes up one-third of all complaints about identity theft.

The Federal Trade Commission has come out with its annual report about consumer complaints regarding fraud, identity theft, and other consumer protection issues, and the report paints an ugly picture for Dallas-Fort Worth.

The report shows 773 complaints per 100,000 residents were lodged in 2017. That puts it in the top spot for consumer complaints among the state’s four major metro areas:

Dallas-Fort Worth — 773 per 100,000 residents
Austin — 534 per 100,000 residents
Houston — 506 per 100,000 residents
San Antonio — 452 per 100,000 residents

So, why does DFW generate so many consumer complaints?

Phylissia Clark, vice president of public relations and communications at the Better Business Bureau (BBB) that serves 29 counties in north-central Texas, notes that the BBB contributes data for the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) report. She offers a few explanations, including:

Residents of DFW are familiar with the BBB, which has had a local office since 1920. That then helps encourage residents of the region to lodge complaints with the bureau.
Dallas is among the top five cities for the highest concentration of small businesses per capita. Small businesses, she says, spur a fair number of BBB complaints.
More than 20 Fortune 500 companies are based in DFW, and many of these companies operate in business-to-consumer industries that happen to garner BBB complaints.

“Complaints for a company are generally processed by the office that serves the geographical area where the business is headquartered,” Clark says. “The intersection of those two factors, size and industry, sets the stage for a higher complaint volume.”

In the end, she says, “a critical mass of both large and small businesses within the right industries creates the perfect storm [of complaints].”

Across the state in 2017, the most common complaints outlined in the FTC report dealt with debt collection (40 percent) and identity theft (14 percent). In the identity theft category, credit card fraud was the biggest problem, making up 33 percent of all complaints about identity theft.

Almost certainly, some of the Texas complaints filed in 2017 stemmed from a massive data breach at credit-reporting bureau Equifax. Among the victims of the data breach were 12.2 million Texans.

In the Equifax breach, which stretched from mid-May through July last year, hackers gained names, Social Security numbers, birthdates, addresses, and driver’s license numbers. Equifax revealed the breach last September.

All of the 2017 complaints compiled by the FTC are tied to unfair, deceptive, or fraudulent business practices.

“Unfairness is generally thought of as harm to consumers that they could not reasonably have avoided,” says Frank Dorman, a spokesman for the FTC. “Loosely defined, deception is false advertising. Fraud occurs when businesses don’t make good on their promises or cheat people out of money.”

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E-Cigarette News

Dallas City Council places restrictions on vaping in public

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Man vaping

Vaping will now be banned exactly like smoking, thanks to a new ordinance from the Dallas City Council.

At their December 11 meeting, the council passed an ordinance to ban vaping in all the same areas where smoking is not allowed. It'll go into effect on December 11, 2025 — giving everyone a year to get into compliance.

Proposed by City of Dallas Environmental Commission (EVC) and the Office of Environmental Quality and Sustainability (OEQS), the ordinance amends the definition of “smoking” in the Dallas City Code to include the use of vaping devices.

The ordinance does not ban vaping — it only bans where you can vape: no vaping in all indoor and enclosed spaces; within 15 feet of building entrances; and on park property. The ordinance also bans marijuana smoking in those same places.

In addition, the amendment requires restaurants, hotels, fitness centers and other businesses to update their signage to clearly state that both smoking and electronic smoking devices are prohibited.

The ordinance already earned widespread support from health organizations such as the Dallas County Health and Human Services, the American Lung Association, and the American Heart Association. These organizations, along with the World Health Organization, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and the U.S. Surgeon General, have all raised concerns about the health risks of direct and second-hand exposure to vaping aerosols, particularly for vulnerable populations such as children and older adults.

Dallas is not the first city to impose such a ban: San Antonio enacted a similar ban in October. Theirs goes into effect on January 1, 2025.

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