By Karen Blackledge
The Daily Item
DANVILLE — Montour County District Attorney Robert Buehner Jr. has busted the American Automobile Association.
The prosecutor caught AAA charging some consumers an extra $2 when they renewed their memberships without telling them how the money was to be used. The extra money went to the AAA Foundation.
"I suspected this was a consumer protection law violation, and it was," Buehner said Tuesday.
Buehner, a longtime AAA member, filed a complaint in February 2008 with the Bureau of Consumer Protection in Harrisburg on behalf of his wife, Alice.
He suspected AAA Mid-Atlantic, with addresses of Wilmington, Del., and Philadelphia, was adding $2 to their renewal statement without any comment or information about what the $2 charge represented.
When he called AAA, he discovered the $2 was for the AAA Foundation.
"Had we not carefully reviewed our statement, this $2 contribution would have been charged to our credit card payment on April 1, 2008," he wrote.
There may have been hundreds of thousands of members in the Mid-Atlantic Region and Pennsylvania unknowingly charged the additional $2 on their credit cards, he said.
He wrote there was no information on the statement where one could opt-out by calling any number or taking any type of action.
On July 14, Buehner received a copy of an assurance of voluntary compliance, signed by AAA Mid-Atlantic Inc., and filed in Commonwealth Court on July 1 from Margie Anderson, a deputy attorney general in the Bureau of Consumer Protection in State College. Anderson couldn't be reached for comment Tuesday.
State Attorney General Thomas Corbett Jr. found AAA had violated Consumer Protection Law by sending billing and renewal statements to members without including on statements a description of the charge for the $2.
AAA sent billing and renewal statements to members with inconsistent information, for example, the left side of the statement requested a $2 contribution for the foundation and the right side of the statement requested a $1 contribution, Corbett said.
He also found that AAA was adding a contribution of $2 to the foundation from automatic renewal members without obtaining their consent.
Beginning in June 2006, AAA increased the contribution amount from $1 to $2. The company sent billing and renewal statements to Pennsylvania consumers that included a contribution to the foundation but did not include an explanation of what this charge for $2 represented, according to Corbett.
In the settlement, AAA agreed to pay the commonwealth $10,000, of which $7,500 will be distributed to a charitable organization, $2,000 will go to the Treasury Department and $500 to the pay costs of investigation by the office of the attorney general.
AAA also agreed to identify on the renewal statement a line about the annual fee, a line with the charitable contribution being requested and a line representing the total of all amounts listed on the statement. The company will also obtain consent from members prior to automatically charging any amounts to their accounts, according to the agreement.
