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Sentinel has added new features and refined some existing ones to
improve users’ search experience.
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Comment
word cloud: Create a word cloud of the most common terms from the comments
in your search results. With the click of a button in your results, you can see
the most popular themes without reading every comment.
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More
navigators: Sentinel’s filters (called “navigators”) can refine your initial
search results – and now users can apply more than one filter at a time.
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Surge Reports:
Users now have more options to define
their Surge Report: the consumer or company location; period when a complaint
is created; country or state; consumer’s age range; complaint source and
initial contact method; or Product Service Code.
A
refreshed look – and personalized home pages for users – are coming soon to
Sentinel. Want to learn more about using Sentinel and these new features? New
training sessions are in the works. If you are interested in setting up a
session for your organization, email Sentinel@FTC.gov.
In two related settlements, one with the United
States and the State of California, and one with the FTC,
German automaker Volkswagen AG and related entities have agreed to spend up to
$14.7 billion to settle charges of cheating emissions tests and deceiving
customers. Volkswagen will 1) offer consumers a buyback and lease termination
for nearly 500,000 vehicles (model year 2009-2015 2.0 liter diesel vehicles
sold or leased in the U.S.) and 2) spend up to $10.03 billion to compensate
consumers under the program. In addition, the companies will spend $4.7 billion
to mitigate the pollution from these cars and invest in green vehicle
technology.
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Herbalife International
and its affiliated companies have agreed to fully restructure their
U.S. business operations and pay $200 million to compensate consumers to settle
the FTC’s charges that the companies deceived people into believing they could
earn substantial money selling diet, nutritional supplement, and personal care
products. The settlement requires Herbalife to revamp its compensation system
so that it rewards retail sales to customers and eliminates the incentives in
its current system that reward distributors primarily for recruiting. It
mandates a new compensation structure in which success depends on whether
participants sell
Herbalife products, not on whether they buy products.
Do you meet with business owners in your
community? Consider letting them know about updates to the Telemarketing Sales Rule (TSR) that
ban certain payment methods that are used often by scammers. Now it is illegal for telemarketers to ask customers to pay
for goods or services using cash-to-cash money transfers (such as MoneyGram and
Western Union transfers) or by providing PIN numbers from cash reload cards (think
MoneyPak, Vanilla Reload, or Reloadit packs). It’s also illegal for
telemarketers to use unsigned checks (“remotely created payment orders”) to
withdraw money directly from consumers’ bank accounts.
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Here’s the list of mortgage and debt
relief operations that the FTC has asked the courts to permanently ban from the
industry. The FTC has sued over 500 companies and individuals who broke the law,
and banned nearly 300 of them.
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The
FTC and the State
of Florida sued Consumer Assistance Project and Student Aid Center
for student loan debt relief schemes. The companies allegedly promised to get
people out of student loan debt or to get those debts significantly reduced
through government programs. However, people who paid the companies got
virtually nothing for their money. At best, loans were deferred or put into
forbearance. At worst, Student Aid Center told people to stop contacting their
lenders and pay the company instead, which made the situation worse.
A new report, Combating Fraud in African American and Latino Communities: The FTC’s
Comprehensive Strategic Plan, sets forth the agency’s extensive
efforts to combat scams in every community with an emphasis on raising public
awareness and encouraging more fraud reports. The agency will also host a workshop on December 6, 2016 to bring together state and
federal law enforcers, researchers, legal services organizations, and other
groups that serve the African American and Latino communities. The participants
will examine prior research showing that African Americans and Hispanics were
more likely than non-Hispanic whites to be fraud victims. Also, research shows
that there is serious underreporting of fraud in these communities.
The
FTC has new resources to help people recognize and avoid some common imposter
scams. Visit FTC.gov/imposters (ftc.gov/impostores in
Spanish) to find new videos and articles about spotting IRS imposters, romance
scammers, tech support schemers, and family emergency scammers.
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Sentinel welcomes new members from:
- the Attorney General’s office in Michigan
- the Denver District Attorney’s office
- 12 police or sheriff’s departments
in Alabama, Connecticut, Indiana, Illinois, Minnesota, Montana, Ohio, and Wisconsin
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Share any of FTC’s free resources and tips in your programs, on your website, and with your social networks.
Order free FTC materials at FTC.gov/bulkorder.
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