State's Attorney General's Office

[Derek G.]

Hi All,

I peruse these forums often and have taken away some very helpful resources from users. I thought I'd add an experience I had back in 2014 and maybe it'll help someone else down the road. 
April 2014 a tornado had its way with one of my properties. All said, $65,000 would bring my house back to a livable/rentable state. The battle with the insurance company was crazy, but they eventually caved. 
First thing that had to be done was water mitigation and protection from elements before any work was to be done. I called a well known mitigation franchise, for the purposes of COMPLETE anonymity, I'll call them "MervCrow water mitigation". They gave me the estimate (Just shy of $15,000) to run their machines and mitigate the issue. 
I came back a week later and the entire inside of the property was stripped down to the studs. All appliances, furniture, fixtures and even the toilets were all gone. They even tried to bill me for over $50,000. Calling them proved to be futile as I was met with "You agreed to this", "You never said anything about keeping the contents", "The price is fair".
Well, I contemplated getting an attorney when it dawned on me... My tax dollars already pay for the consumer division of my state's attorney general's office. I went online. I filed my complaint for theft & fraud of a locally owned franchise and waited. Within a week I got a request through the Attorney General's office that "MervCrow" wanted to negotiate and settle the issue. After communicating with the company, I walked away without owing a dime and got it in writing from AG office. I probably could have taken them to court and gotten some money for it, but this saved me a ton of stress in an already stressful time. It was worth it.  
I've used the AG's office a couple other times for other lesser property related issues, and in ALL cases came out ahead without the need for official litigation. Obviously the AG offices aren't the end all be all, but in many cases, your State's AG consumer affairs division will be willing to assist you with shady companies. 
Hopefully someone finds this thread one day and it helps. 

Derek