Consumer Law

Company hawking ?free? credit scores goes after blogger who calls this a bait and switch

By Paul Levy

Adaptive Marketing, which ran into controversy a few months ago for using former New York Times columnist Ben Stein in its TV ads for ?free credit scores,? has brought a pre-litigation discovery proceeding against a blogger using the pseudonym ?flaneur de fraude.?   Flaneur?s crime?  She agreed with a Reuters blogger who had the audacity to refer to its advertising as a ?predatory bait and switch.?    Perhaps the blogger drew Adaptive?s especial ire for digging out a long line of instances in which Vertrue, Adaptive?s parent company, has been brought to justice for a variety of schemes to place recurring charges on consumers? credit cards, and for linking a Better Business Bureau report giving Vertrue a grade of ?F.? When even the Better Business Bureau disses a company, you know there must be a big problem.

Citing the long line of cases that entitled bloggers to remain anonymous absent evidence that they have done anything wrong, Public Citizen has entered the case to block discovery directed to Yahoo! because the blogger has a yahoo.com email address.   Although the burden on a defamation plaintiff would be to prove falsity, in this case, of course, it is hard to believe that what the blogger said isn?t true.   Instead of just getting a credit score, consumers are entitled to obtain their entire credit report free of charge at the government-mandated web site annualcreditreport.com.    And the ads in question solicit telephone calls in which the service of credit monitoring is at best hawked, and at worst, as many consumers have complained, slipped in ? it remains to be seen which is true.  Such services ?are often overrated, oversold, and overpriced.?   But regardless of whether the services are worthwhile, and whether they are charged to consumers' credit cards after a genuine consent, ?bait and switch? seems to be a fair characterization of what Adaptive is doing. 

Adaptive and Vertrue have been similarly criticized in the Wall Street Journal, Washington Post and New York Times, but it doesn't claim defamation by companies that can afford to defend themselves.  So Adaptive?s suit seems to be just the latest in a long line of cases in which companies that don?t want to be criticized seek to cleanse their reputations through subpoenas sent as a means of intimidation to those who may not be able to defend themselves.  It remains to be seen whether the Streisand effect gives them second thoughts

Full post as published by CL&P Blog on September 17, 2009 (boomark / email).