State and local consumer agencies operate “where the rubber meets the road,” dealing with problems that directly impact people’s lives and their wallets. The complaints they receive run the gamete from sleazy auto sales to shoddy home improvement work, bareknuckled debt collection tactics to bogus health products and services, fraud on the Internet to gouging at the gas pump. State and local consumer agencies are often the first to hear about unfair and deceptive practices in the marketplace and among the first responders to disasters. Unlike most federal agencies, state and local consumer agencies usually try to resolve individual complaints in addition to taking legal action to stop large-scale abuses. Unfortunately, our latest survey of these front-line agencies shows that while complaints are going up, the resources to help consumers are going down.

To provide a national snapshot of the challenges faced by consumers and state and local consumer agencies, Consumer Federation of America periodically conducts surveys in cooperation with the National Association of Consumer Agency Administrators and the North American Consumer Protection Investigators. This report is based on surveying 34 state, county, and city agencies from 19 states across America. The surveys cover a one-year period, which in most cases was January through December 2008.