State files suit against Internet provider

Iowa’s consumer advocate has filed suit against an internet service provider, charging the ISP defrauded customers and wouldn’t respond when they tried to cancel service. Assistant attorney general Steve St. Clairsays “Dot-Now-dot-com” sparked more than 200 complaints to the consumer-protection agency. St. Clair says the office has gotten more than 200 complaints from all over the country including Iowa, some saying the ISP didn’t give adequate service, give refunds, even made unauthorized withdrawals from consumers’ credit cards and bank accounts. St. Clair says the company wasn’t any more cooperative with the consumer office, so it applied some of its enforcement power. St. Clair says the A-G’s office sought information from the company and its owner, and couldn’t get answers so they filed a suit asking for a court order to get it. St. Clair says his office has never had a case quite like this before. He says the internet service provider business is located in Des Moines, though he’s not certain where the hardware’s located. The Colorado corporation operates from a Des Moines address, however, and the AG’s office therefore has filed papers to prevent it from doing business till it comes up with the records for consumer-protection investigators. And its business operations, and alleged mistreatment of customers, extend far beyond Iowa’s borders. St. Clair pulled ten complaints from the file and found some from New Jersey, Arizona, West Virginia, North Carolina, Kentucky, Alabama, Wisconsin and Canada, which indicates to him that most of the states are represented among all the complaints. Internet users who’ve had a problem with www.dotnow.com can contact the attorney general’s consumer protection division at (515) 281-3731.