Illinois Attorney General Kwame Raoul filed a lawsuit last week against ABC Plumbing, Heating, Cooling & Electric, Inc. (ABC), alleging deceptive business practices that misled consumers, often seniors, by having unlicensed technicians sign contracts for home repair work at inflated prices while unknowingly giving up their legal rights to cancel the contracts.
Raoul’s lawsuit alleges that ABC violated the Illinois Consumer Fraud Act, the Deceptive Trade Practices Act and the Illinois Home Repair and Improvement Act.
Accordingly, the complaint seeks a permanent injunction to cease current and prevent future violations, the rescission of all contracts entered into as a result of the unlawful conduct, and civil monetary relief for the violations.
Raoul’s lawsuit alleges that ABC technicians entered consumers’ homes to inspect the consumers’ initial home repair issues and then inspected other areas of the homes without permission.
When technicians inevitably discover other problems, they are treated as emergencies or even life-threatening hazards that require immediate remediation, the lawsuit alleges.
Raoul’s lawsuit alleges that in some cases, consumers didn’t understand they were actually signing a contract, or the contract contained language waiving their three-day right to cancel.
The lawsuit alleges that these upsell techniques often target senior citizens who rely on ABC to complete emergency jobs they cannot fix themselves.
The complaint alleges that when ABC completed overpriced and often unnecessary work, it was often sloppy or incomplete, sometimes performed by unlicensed technicians.
theme
illinois litigation
Is this article valuable?
Here are more articles you might like.
interested in litigation?
Get automated alerts on this topic.
