USA Discounters: Thank You for Your Service: How One Company Sues Soldiers Worldwide

[unhappycamper]

http://www.alternet.org/civil-liberties/thank-you-your-service-how-one-company-sues-soldiers-worldwide?paging=off¤t_page=1#bookmark

This company sues service members based anywhere in the world, no matter how much inconvenience or expense they incur.

Thank You for Your Service: How One Company Sues Soldiers Worldwide
By Paul Kiel
July 26, 2014

Aguirre later learned that USA Discounters' easy lending has a flip side. Should customers fall behind, the company transforms into an efficient collection operation. And this part of its business takes place not where customers bought their appliances, but in two local courthouses just a short drive from the company's Virginia Beach headquarters.

From there, USA Discounters files lawsuits against service members based anywhere in the world, no matter how much inconvenience or expense they would incur to attend a Virginia court date. Since 2006, the company has filed more than 13,470 suits and almost always wins, records show.

~snip~

Timothy Dorsey, vice president of USA Discounters, said the company provides credit to service members who would not otherwise qualify and sues only after other attempts to resolve debts have failed.

As for the company's choice of court, he said it was "for the customer's benefit." In Virginia, the company isn't required to use a lawyer to file suit. USA Discounters' savings on legal fees are passed on to the customer, he said.

[mahatmakanejeeves]

1. From the WaPo, which ran the article yesterday.

This was a joint WaPo - Pro Publica effort.

I'm still steamed. There ought to be a law, but you know why there isn't. Thanks for posting this.

I see ads like this inserted in Recreation News, a tabloid for gummint workers in the DC area. The prices for the "buy with a monthly payment" items are wildly inflated. You can buy a laptop at Staples for about $259.99. It might not have all the features, but it will do 99.9 percent of the things that people buy a laptop for.

The answer, and I've believed this for years, is mandatory home economics courses in high school. No kid should be let out of school without knowing some basic stuff. I mean things like how to sew a button back on (boys and girls), how to balance a checkbook, and especially, how to recognize a flim-flam.

USA Discounters hooks some service members with credit before springing the debt trap

By Paul Kiel | ProPublica July 25

....
{Army Spc. Angel Aguirre } later learned that USA Discounters’ easy lending has a flip side. Should customers fall behind, the company transforms into an efficient collection operation. And this part of its business takes place not where customers bought their appliances, but in two local courthouses just a short drive from the company’s Virginia Beach headquarters.

From there, USA Discounters files lawsuits against service members based anywhere in the world, no matter how much inconvenience or expense they would incur to attend a Virginia court date. Since 2006, the company has filed more than 13,470 suits and almost always wins, records show.
....

The same courts in Norfolk and Virginia Beach are favored by two similar companies headquartered in the area — Freedom Furniture and Electronics and Military Credit Services — that offer high-priced credit to military clientele. Together with USA Discounters, the three companies have filed more than 35,000 suits since 2006.

Officials with Freedom and Military Credit Services did not respond to repeated phone calls and e-mails.
....

ProPublica is an independent, nonprofit investigative newsroom in New York. It publishes its work at propublica.org and through partnerships with other media outlets.

Yeah, thank you for your service.

ETA: wait; there's more, and it's juicy.

Timothy Dorsey, vice president of USA Discounters, said the company provides credit to service members who would not otherwise qualify and sues only after other attempts to resolve debts have failed.

As for the company’s choice of court, he said it was “for the customer’s benefit.” In Virginia, the company isn’t required to use a lawyer to file suit. USA Discounters’ savings on legal fees are passed on to the customer, he said.

Admiral nominee rose through ranks despite ‘illogical act’

By Rowan Scarborough - The Washington Times
Thursday, February 16, 2012

When Lt. j.g. Timothy W. Dorsey intentionally fired his fighter jet’s missile at an Air Force reconnaissance plane, nearly killing its two aviators and destroying the aircraft during a training exercise, it was hard to imagine then how his Navy career would wind up 25 years later.

The official investigation into the 1987 shoot-down said the F-14 pilot’s decision “raises substantial doubt as to his capacity for good, sound judgment.” The Navy banned him from flying its aircraft.
....

Capt. Dorsey’s father, James Dorsey, was at the time of the incident commander of the carrier USS America and an aviator. A year later, he became assistant deputy chief of naval operations at the Pentagon and later attained three-star vice admiral rank. ... In his civilian job, Capt. Dorsey is general counsel at USA Discounters in Virginia Beach.
....

Capt. Dorsey kept his Navy career on track by reinventing himself, first as a Reserve intelligence officer and then as an inspector general in charge of investigating wrongdoing. In 1995, he earned a law degree from the University of Richmond.

Shot Down

The Navy has a tradition of not forgiving mistakes. So how is it that a pilot who knowingly fired on a friendly plane—costing the government millions and nearly killing two men—was able to rise through the ranks to the Navy’s highest level?
By Shane Harris

....
For reasons that remain part of Dorsey’s confidential personnel record, he was not dismissed from the Navy. Several former officers I spoke to, from the Air Force and the Navy, pointed out that his father, James F. Dorsey, was at the time a senior naval officer, a onetime aviator and commander of an aircraft carrier. The elder Dorsey went on to attain the rank of vice admiral and commanded the US Third Fleet in Hawaii. While it’s difficult to imagine that Dorsey’s father blatantly pulled strings to keep his son in the Navy, many retired officers said that his stature might have caused the younger Dorsey’s commanding officers to think twice about kicking him out.
....

Dorsey enrolled in law school at the University of Richmond. He commuted to Virginia Beach one weekend a month for reserve duty, where he took to the logical work of intelligence analysis. He was also an excellent law student, according to a former professor. In the interview he gave after the shootdown, there are signs of a budding legal mind. Dorsey was adept at compartmentalizing and attributing different motives to specific actions along the timeline on the day of the shootdown. He also did his best to argue his way out of full culpability, though he did admit to “pilot error, poor logic, poor judgment.”
....

I called Dorsey at his office in Virginia Beach, where he’s vice president and general counsel at USA Discounters, a retail chain that caters to military servicemembers and government employees. He said that the shootdown “happened a long time ago” and that he had moved on with his career and his life. He noted that his selection was still pending in the Senate but he’d be willing to speak with me about it. He’d just returned from a business trip and would call me in a day or so.

[mahatmakanejeeves]

3. Wait - I'm still angry.

How to Swindle Soldiers

A new report from ProPublica highlights three companies that have made a business out of suing service members.

Rebecca J. RosenJul 28 2014, 7:45 AM ET

Well, here is a clever new business strategy: Offer service members around the country and around the world financing for their appliances, furniture, and electronics, and then, when they fall behind on their loans, sue them in courts they can't get to to represent themselves.

Turns out: effective! Also: legal.

These are the conclusions of a new report jointly published by ProPublica and The Washington Post that looks at the financial "innovation" of USA Discounters and two other companies, Freedom Furniture and Electronics and Military Credit Services, that sell goods to service members on credit and then, if they fall behind, go after them in Virginia courts, regardless of where the service members are based. Together the three companies have filed 35,000 lawsuits in a little under a decade.
....

As with any sort of credit, if you don't pay your bills, you're going to find yourself in a mess. What's troubling about USA Discounters' model is the absence of meaningful legal recourse available to these service members. As Carolyn Carter of the National Consumer Law Center tells Kiel, it's "designed to obtain default judgments against consumers without giving them any real opportunity to defend themselves."