Ethnic Media Services News Media Roundtable–Part 3

Betsy DeNardi, Director of the consumer protection division of the Indiana Attorney General’s office. Last year her office received over 11,000 consumer files related to mediation or licensing matters or identity theft matters.

In 2019, her office received more than 27,000 calls from Hoosiers.

“We have an intake division that takes in and obtains all of the consumer complaints that the Attorney General mentioned that we received. But we also have a hotline where consumers contact us in order to get answers to questions.”

Her office responds “immediately” to email complaints that include an address. “And so we encourage people when they’re contacting us to check the spam folder, to make sure that they see that the email was received and has been acknowledging their complaints.” Many consumer matters are handled by the consumer mediation area to try to resolve matters.

“But it is a voluntary process, and so a consumer or a business can choose not to participate in that process and we obviously cannot take any steps to require anyone to participate in that process, but we are very successful in making arrangements and reaching resolutions in those matters.”