Service-contract company will stop mailing vehicle-recall warnings

Service-contract company will stop mailing vehicle-recall warnings

Carhill Enterprises will no longer mail postcards warning of vehicle recalls as a way to get consumers on the phone with sales agents selling extended auto-service contracts, the chief executive of the St. Louis company said Wednesday.

The announcement came on the same day that the Post-Dispatch published a story detailing how Carhill, doing business as Consumer Protection Services, mailed more than 100,000 of the postcards in the last three months. Consumers and the Better Business Bureau said the mailers were misleading, and the Missouri Attorney General’s office said Tuesday it had opened an investigation to determine whether the direct-mail marketing broke the law.

Andrew Hillin, a downtown developer and the chief executive of Carhill, said Wednesday that he still believes the company was providing a service by alerting consumers to recalls related to their vehicles. But he said the practice attracted too much unfair criticism.

FULL STORY : http://www.stltoday.com/blogzone/the-savvy-consumer-blog/extended-auto-service-contracts/2009/05/service-contract-company-will-stop-mailing-vehicle-recall-warnings/