COLUMBIA, S.C. — The number of consumer complaints against businesses in South Carolina is on the rise. According to new numbers from the South Carolina Department of Consumer Affairs (SCDCA).
“In all of 2023, we saw about 5,700 complaints filed with our agency, that was about 27% more from the year before,” Scott Cooke said.
Cooke is with the SCDCA, he says the agency continues to see a rise in the number of consumer complaints filed with the agency
“Usually it’s vehicles, contractors, home repair type stuff, and then timeshares, real estate, those types of matters and HOAs we kind of put those all under the same category. Those same three categories kind are our repeat complaint list from year to year,” he said.
According to the agency, 2,904 complaints were received from January 1st to June 30th of this year. Nearly $570,000 has been recovered for consumers in the first six months of the year, that’s a 22% increase from 2023
“Prices have increased on a lot of stuff so people are thinking more consciously about those things that they may not be happy with the service about. They may be more willing to go through that complaint process and finding ways to kind of get some of that money back or get the type of service that they expect for that price,” Cooke said.
Agency officials say consumers can file a complaint on their website.
“If somebody files a complaint with us, we give it a day or two just to kind of go through and look over that complaint, see what the main issues are. Then we'll take that and get a letter together for the business and then we give them 20 days to respond to that letter. A lot of it is just kind of we ask the consumer to tell us what happened, what they would like to happen and kind of what things they've tried to do themselves to resolve those issues and what they would like the business to do,” Cooke said.
According to the agency, service and repairs are some of the most common scams and complaints received.
“Your transmission flush, your brake fluid flush and stuff like that, they can be scammed so easily and up charged because you don't really know if they actually did it or they didn't do it," Joey Lemmon said.
Lemmon is the owner of Hound Dog 4x4, an auto repair shop in Columbia, he says drivers get used cars that have been painted underneath to cover up problems.
“It makes you look like you're getting a cleaner car, cleaner truck, but once you get under the black there’s normally a lot of rust. A lot of wear and tear. It could have oil coming down somewhere. It could have a lot more hidden stuff. Paint covers up everything. You always want to look out for it's things it's been spray painted underneath," he said.
Lemmon recommends the following if you’re shopping around for a used car.
“A lot of places will allow you to take the car to a mechanic shop and have it checked out. That's the biggest thing, if you can't do that, the next best thing is to look at all the fluids. Pull your dipstick out, check the fluids. If it smells bad, it probably is, if you look under it, you see rust or you see rubber boots on stuff broken, you see things that don't look right, they look real greasy and oily then it's probably an issue," he said.
If you’re looking to file a complaint with the agency, there’s a criteria to meet.
“South Carolina residents, if it’s a South Carolina business. We can't really take a dispute that's a person to person or dispute as against a government agency. Those would typically go to that government agency but if it is person in South Carolina who has a dispute with the business, we can even help you with the business that's in another state possibly, but we'll take a look at that,” Cooke said.