BURLINGTON, Vt. (WCAX) – Consumer complaints are a major focus of the Vermont Attorney General’s Office. The Consumer Assistance Program fields thousands of complaints every year and a long-running partnership with the University of Vermont is also providing students with valuable skills.
Students in the University of Vermont’s service-learning classes are getting on-the-job training answering phone calls for the Consumer Assistance Program, a program that helped recover nearly $2 million for Vermonters last year, a 300% increase from 2022.
“It’s a lot of quick thinking on your feet. One moment you could get something on someone’s landlord kicking them out. The other one could be about someone’s Social Security number being used,” said Olivia Miller, a UVM junior taking part in the program. She says she was interested in how to help people with consumer claims and took one of the classes associated with the CAP program. “There is nothing quite like this at UVM. This is real-world experience. We are diving head-first into everything. I think this is just an incredible resource and opportunity, especially for being so young.”
Consumer complaints range anywhere from those related to vehicles, fuel, or retail. The program gets about 30 to 40 calls per day.
The CAP program has partnered with UVM for the last 40 years but Vermont Attorney General Charity Clark says the program has evolved. “Home improvement complaints are near the top of our complaint list. The other change that we have seen is definitely a rise in scams. With robo calls, with voice over internet protocols and computers, it makes it easier for people to try to scam Vermonters,” she said.
CAP assistant director Lisa Jensen says making sure the younger generation knows how to spot scams and understand how to address complaints is a win-win for students and consumers. “The value of a service learning class is students develop knowledge and professional skills, transferable skills, that they can then take out into their next internship or their first position job right out of college,” she said.