I'm a firm believer in using the power of the internet to keep retailers and service providers honest. And I think consumers owe it to each other to report those companies that provide poor or dishonest service to their customers. But it's equally important to let the world know what you've have a great experience. Let's reward the good companies with our business!

How do I love Home Depot? Let me count the ways... I cannot remember ever going into a Home Depot and getting anything less than superb customer service. Even when they've been very busy and clearly shorthanded, I was still treated with kindness and the sales people made sure I had everything I needed (without feeling rushed).

Chalk up one more gold star for Home Depot this week. Over the weekend I found a cool refrigerator for my office. I don't need a full size refrigerator, but I wanted something a little more substantial than the typical "dorm room" model compact refrigerator. The only problem with this medium-sized refrigerator that I found at Home Depot? It doesn't fit in my car.

Mexicans working in the U.S. no longer have to wait in boredom while their phone calls home from New York connect. Companies like VoodooDox (owned by Disney and others) are selling advertising to fill those idle seconds.

Unfortunately, the marketing seems to work. According to Advertising Age, 12% or more of the time callers respond to the whispered pitches for products such as money wiring (callers are prompted to press "1" if they want more info on the product advertised). Among the clients that use the service are radio stations, to torment callers waiting on the line to win free tickets to a concert.

I lump this together with spam, telemarketing and door-to-door solicting as types of marketing for which we can only blame ourselves. These would disappear overnight if we simply didn't respond. If we do respond to this new ad type, guess what? On-hold times will just increase, more time to wring a buck from our wallets.

So, if you find yourself being pitched in this way while on hold, do us all a favor and stick your hand in your pocket.

The hard thing about writing comedy is that it all too often loses its punch by becoming reality. A few weeks ago, I joked that governments could make money by running real-time auctions among cars approaching an intersection, the highest bidder getting the green light.

In the current issue of Forbes is an article about a new technology being installed in Calgary's city bus fleet that allows those buses to trigger approaching lights to green. The result is public transportation that moves more quickly through city traffic than individual vehicles, saving the system a huge amount of fuel (2,000 gallons per bus per year) and a similar reduction in CO2 emissions.

Calgary is only the latest of 98 cities that have installed these 'signal preemption' systems, totaling 30,000 plus intersections. The transmitters were originally designed for emergency responders. The original systems, using infrared, were soon hacked, allowing those with a hacked unit to sail through town without stopping. Encoding has, at the moment, kept the new systems free from interlopers.

Today, after many months of procrastinating, I finally called AT&T to tell them to take their "long distance service" off my home phone line. I don't even use the line, much less the long distance. So the idea of paying an additional $5 a month for something that doesn't cost AT&T anything to make available to me, and for something I don't ever use, is just silly.

Of course, it took me many months to get around to making this phone call. (Imagine them collecting $5 a month from hundreds of thousands of customers just like me, who just ignore the issue.) I know, I know. It's my fault for being too lazy to call them. It's just that it's always so painful to call AT&T...

So I call customer service, go through several menus, and end up speaking to a live person. He tells me he's happy to remove the $5 per month charge for the long distance I don't use, if I just pay a $9 fee. Huh? I have to pay you if I want to stop paying you?

Here's a pretty convoluted story I found on the GolfWrx.com message board. Basically, this guy went to Golf Galaxy and purchased a club for $60 and then received this phone call: "The sonartec club you purchased 2 weeks ago shouldn't have been for sale. It was an employee's club getting serviced or something. Would you do a big favor and bring it back in? I would appreciate it very much and we will take care of you!"

So this good Samaritan drives 60 miles to return it, and is offered a $100 used driver as a trade. Not satisfied, he asked to be upgraded to a $250 driver and was told that he couldn't have it. He ended up settling for some golf balls because he didn't want the driver he was offered.

So here's the question: did he get ripped off?

I recently received a message from Reunion.com that looked like it was from a former employee who was searching for me on the site. Weird. Why would she look for me on a site targeted toward high school classmates? We grew up a country apart from each other.

Then I heard about the mess on a message board I frequent, and now the LA Times is writing about it... Reunion.com has found a sneaky way to email everyone in your address book without your permission.

The game goes like this: You get a message saying Bob Jones was looking for you at Reunion.com and you're supposed to visit the site to see who else has been searching for you. Once you get to the site, you're prompted to sign up for a free account. After you sign up, you receive a message like this: "We'll find your friends and family who are already members and also automatically invite any nonmembers to join (it's free!)."

Have you been cheated, scammed, or otherwise disappointed by a company? WalletPop wants your real life stories about consumer scams and complaints.

Email us with your story.... Did you receive horrible customer service? Did you pay for a product or service that you didn't receive? Did a company refuse to honor a warranty? Were you scammed out of money?

What we want to hear the facts of your firsthand experience. If we're interested in your story, we may email you to clarify some of the facts or to request your documentation. Don't be offended if we ask you for more information... we just want to make sure that we get the story right. And while we won't necessarily be able to fully investigate your claims or get your money back, we'll at least be able to hold companies accountable for their behavior. And hopefully, they'll even respond with some action to right their wrongs

Tracy L. Coenen, CPA, MBA, CFE performs fraud examinations and financial investigations for her company Sequence Inc. Forensic Accounting, and is the author of Essentials of Corporate Fraud.

Sometimes all it takes is a little pressure to get the wheels of a corporation moving. It turns out that shortly after the story of Tom, a Sears customer who was charged $1070 for a TV he never received, gained traction in the media, Mark Ennis, from the Presidential office at Citibank service contacted him. Mark had tried calling the Sears store where Tom purchased the TV but was given the same treatment Tom experienced. Undeterred Mark went "off script" and pulled the records for every Tom who purchased a TV on "Black Friday" in order to find out what went wrong on the order.

It turns out that just after the first TV was refunded, it was re-rung, resulting in the outstanding charge to Tom's Sears card. None of the individuals Tom spoke to over the past 4 months looked past the initial refund transaction to see what was really happening. If they had spent an additional 5 minutes investigating the billing issue, Tom's problems could have been solved months ago. Thankfully the story has a happy ending, Tom is getting a refund for his undelivered TV and some Sears employees will likely be getting a refresher course in customer service. That is if they aren't shown the door for this heinous neglect of customer service. Bravo to Mark for helping out the consumer and making extra effort along the way. We need more people like you in corporations.

Via Consumerist

Update; no thanks to Sears, Citibank officials have stepped in to resolve this dilemma. Read about it here:

Just in case you need another reason not to use a store branded credit card, a Sears card holder, Tom, is still waiting for a refund on a TV that he ordered last November at his local store. After finding out that Sears didn't have the specially priced TV he wanted in stock on Black Friday, the store agreed to order one for him. He went ahead and paid for the $1,070 TV with his store credit card.

The customer left for a week long vacation expecting to pick up his new TV upon his return. However the TV was still unavailable. At this point, he was able to negotiate a lower price on a similar TV by speaking with the manager, for which he also paid. He went home with his new TV to bask in its glow.

He soon found out that Sears had not refunded the original purchase price of $1,070 for the set he had purchased on Black Friday, a TV he has never taken delivery of. He has tried speaking to the manager at the local store as well as the customer support for his Sears card, but no one can seem to get their act together and issue a refund. Tom already disputed the charge with the "Disputes" department for his Sears Card but is consistently hung up on, as there is no hold queue for the department. Contacting the local manager has proved fruitless as well, as her phone rings continuously.

Right now the customer is out $1,070.74. It is ridiculous that no one at Sears can step outside the script to help resolve a major purchase for this man. To get closure he may find it necessary to take Sears to small claims court or to approach his State Attorney General.

In Ohio, for example, one can file a complaint online and sit back while the AG's office does all the heavy lifting for you. Tom might also call his local news team -- I am sure they have a "Call for Action" segment that this would fit into quite nicely.

He would have been well advised to use a major credit card instead of a store card for this purchase, so that he could better challenge this charge. Store cards are notorious for having high rates, and in this case have a vested interest in not helping him with the dispute.

UPDATE: Additional information has come to my attention, and this article has been updated accordingly.

One of the consumer scams that is most well-known and most hated by fraud experts is the Advance Fee Loan scam. The scam is exactly what it sounds like: You want a loan, and someone offers you a loan but asks for a hefty fee prior to giving you the loan. And we're not talking a small application fee that a bank sometimes requires. We're talking about significant money up front before you ever see a dime. And the "loan" never happens.

One WalletPop reader has been taken for $39,000 with this type of scam. Here's her story with her name changed to protect her identity...

In late 2007, Angie began looking for funding for her small family-owned business. She was in financial trouble and was striking out with banks. She started looking for funding in the private sector, and her research brought her to Global Funding Network.