Companies that sell extended auto-service contracts frequently are accused of deceiving consumers, violating telemarketing laws, peddling worthless products and failing to give refunds owed to customers upon cancellation.

Those allegations tend to dominate news coverage of the industry, and they rarely…

Charles Papenfus, the Ohio man accused of making a terrorist threat against a St. Louis auto service-contract broker, was released from custody over the weekend. A lot of readers have been posing questions about the strange case, and many want…

US Fidelis Chief Executive Chris Riley

More than three months after the new chief executive of US Fidelis told the Better Business Bureau he planned to make sweeping, consumer-friendly reforms at the Wentzville firm, the watchdog group says the number of consumers filing…

In this blog back in April, I wrote about a federal lawsuit that AT&T Mobility filed against several “John Doe” companies that allegedly cold-called its cell-phone customers in order to sell them extended auto-service contracts.

AT&T Mobility alleges that the defendants…

If you missed Saturday’s paper, you probably didn’t see the letter to the editor from US Fidelis CEO Chris Riley. The letter addresses what Riley considers to be shortcomings of a recent article about marketing and sales tactics that former employees…

If you missed it, there’s a story in today’s paper by Elizabethe Holland about a settlement in the lawsuit by Verizon Wireless against US Fidelis, the Wentzville-based broker of extended auto-service contracts.

As part of the settlement, the company is banned from making…

In interview about US Fidelis that aired Tuesday, Missouri Attorney General Chris Koster tells KMOV (Channel 4) that the Wentzville-based broker of extended auto-service contracts has violated telemarketing laws, misrepresented itself to consumers and seems to be too under-capitalized to…