Country bumpkins or wise, earthy sages? Naive or ruled by common sense? Easy pickings or slim pickings for con artists?

As I drove from coast to coast last month, I had a chance to do something that many reporters for national media companies can't do -- spend time between the coasts, in the heartland of America. Being a connoisseur of cons, and being intensely curious about the vulnerability of consumers, I got to wondering: Are people in the simple middle of the country more or less likely to fall for scams and hidden fees than people on the sophisticated coasts? Are folks in North Dakota, Montana and Minnesota protected by good old-fashioned horse sense or overwhelmed by slick fast-talkers from big city banks and cell phone companies?

There's nothing like an incredibly subjective story to stir the pot. You probably won't be surprised to hear that the vast majority of folks I spoke with between Pennsylvania and Montana laughed at the notion that they had targets on their backs, or on their wallets. The idea that they're naive simpletons is a media creation, they said uniformly.

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Jeanne Erickson registered that sentiment on behalf of all North Dakotans.

"Just because we have the movie "Fargo" doesn't mean we really act like that," said Erickson, who works at the North Dakota State University library in Fargo.

Matt Tomcik, from Indianapolis, offered the same defense for his part of the country.

"People from the Midwest are more perceptive than people on TV and people on the coasts want you to think," he said.  "I think we pick up on things and are more sophisticated than they give us credit for."

There is something unmistakably different about people in the middle of the country, however. They aren't as anxious. They aren't as paranoid. And, according to North Dakota State University communications professor Paul Nelson, they are far more trusting. As someone who has studied in both Harvard and Columbia, Nelson has a good frame of reference.  Yes, he told me, folks in the middle of the country are more vulnerable to big company tricks and traps because they are more trusting.

Jeff Olsen, a Minneapolis-based reporter who covers consumer issued for the NBC affiliate KARE, added a more subtle flair to his observation.

"I think people here are slow to get caught up in things. They take their time when signing up for things, they are deliberate," he said.  "But once they are, they are sometimes too polite to complain. They aren't as confrontational as people from the East Coast."  In other words, they aren't as easily fooled by flashy advertising as folks on the coasts, they don't need every latest gadget and they maintain a healthy sense of skepticism.  But because of their inherent belief in the goodness in others -- and their predisposition to decorum -- they are a bit slower to discover that they're being mistreated.

Laura Rizzo, a co-worker of Erickson's in the North Dakota State library, is originally from Wisconsin.  She agreed that people where she grew up are more trusting, but wasn't about to say that makes them naive.  Just because her folks aren't suspicious of everyone doesn't mean they are foolish, she said.

"I feel like we are aware and observant but take more of a hands-off approach,” she said. “We're not automatically critical or looking for ways to dig in. I don't think we're taken advantage of more, but I do believe we are more trusting."

What about the other side of the question? Are Midwesterners actually smarter than their coastal counterparts?  I never did find a humble Midwesterner willing to brag that folks in their state are smarter than New Yorkers, though the question did elicit more than a few knowing smiles.

So without that subjective measure available, I decided to try even more subjective methodology: research and statistics.  Are there any databases which might suggest that folks in the middle of the country are smarter consumers?

Perhaps.

Credit bureau Trans Union offered one glimpse at the answer to this question last month when it released some state-by-state data on credit card debt. The three states with the lowest average credit card debt are, in order, Iowa ($3,872), North Dakota ($4,144) and South Dakota ($4,218). The lowest delinquency rates are in the Dakotas, also.

"That does stand out," said Bill Hardekopf, who runs credit card advice Web site LowCards.com. "Everybody thinks the middle of the country might be not as smart, but maybe they know what they are doing."

The credit card data don't hold up as a tool for indicting the coasts, however. The highest average debt was held by consumers in Alaska, Tennessee and Alabama. Debt level isn't exactly a great signal of predation anyway: It could simply mean that consumers in those states enjoy higher credit limits, or higher incomes.

Delinquencies might be a slightly better indicator, and here we have perhaps a glimpse of confirmation for our hypothesis. Last quarter, Trans Union said, credit card delinquencies were highest in Nevada, Arizona and Florida. If we presume that Arizona and Nevada are full of coastal transplants, perhaps we're on to something.  Meanwhile, both North and South Dakota were atop the lowest delinquency rate list. And topping the list of steepest decreases in credit card debt were Kansas, New Mexico and Vermont.

A look at foreclosure data also yields interesting results. Nevada, Colorado, and California held the top spots for foreclosures per household in March, according to RealtyTrac. The Dakotas (again!), Maine, Wyoming and Vermont ranked at the bottom. In fact, the big states are really a tremendous drag on the statistics: California, Florida, Texas, Michigan and Ohio represented 50 percent of all foreclosures in the nation in March.

Folks in the Dakotas don't like to brag. But they were quick to point out that while states like New Jersey, New York and California are in full-blown budget crisis mode, North Dakota enjoys a large budget surplus. Neighboring Montana also enjoys a surplus (though it is much smaller.) That's just another sign of a thrifty culture, they'll tell you.

But those comparisons, while also telling, aren't quite fair either. North Dakota's ranks of retired teachers and police officers earning full pensions wouldn't add up to the pension costs in Clifton, N.J., let alone the entire state's multi-billion-dollar liabilities.

But I was able to dig into an old bag of tricks -- I mean original research -- in my quest to quantify the horse sense effect. A few years ago, I worked on a "sneaky fee" study with researcher Larry Ponemon of the Ponemon Institute in an attempt to learn how much U.S. consumers lose to unfair fees every year. The research was published as part of my book, "Gotcha Capitalism." We asked a nationwide representative sample of Americans to tell us how much they overpaid for everyday items like cell phones, credit cards, ATM fees, hotels, airlines, pay TV, Internet and so on. The answer: just shy of $1,000 every year apiece.

At my request, Ponemon compiled a new cross tabulation of the research this week, breaking the subjects into the smallest regions he could while maintaining the integrity of the data: Northeast, Mid-Atlantic, Midwest, Southeast, Southwest, and Pacific.  His conclusion?

Consumers in the Midwest pay less in sneaky fees ($857 per year) than those in any other region in the country -- nearly 20 percent less than those in those in the Northeast ($1,035), for example, or the mid-Atlantic ($983).

The difference was most dramatic in cell phones, credit cards and pay TV. For each product, Midwesterners reported that they were screwed out of 15 to 20 percent less than their Eastern counterparts.

The survey results are of course imperfect. We asked consumers to self-report fees that were designed to be sneaky. It's certainly possible that Midwesterners missed more fees than New Yorkers or Bostonians.

But it's hard to look at all this data and conclude that folks in between the coasts are foolish, goofy or easy prey.

Mike Robinson, who has lived in both Long Island and in North Dakota, thinks he has a pretty good grasp on the issue.

"I think that Easterners or West Coast people think that there's some kind of naiveté with the Midwest," he said. "There isn't. People there are just as perceptive as anyone else. I think there's a lot of down-to-earth thinking here. I don't think Midwesterners are deceived that easily."

Of course, somewhere inside a bank or national cell phone company there is someone in a marketing department who can answer this question with much more precision than I can.  How? Just by compiling a list of zip codes where the most unfair credit card applications are aggressively dumped into mailboxes.  Where the cable TV costs more and the cell phone service works less.  Is that in Manhattan, Seattle, Los Angeles, Phoenix or Peoria?  I don't know. But after my trip across the great northern states in our nation, I doubt it's in Fargo, or Minneapolis, or Missoula, Mont., or Madison, Wis.

 

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Driving across the country — it’s as American as Apple pie and baseball. Every time I mentioned my upcoming road trip from D.C. to Seattle, I was met with deep sighs of jealousy and only half-joking exclamations of “take me with you.” I think the 3,000-mile drive should be a required part of a college degree.

Each time I make the trek, I learn so much about myself and my country.  At least once each trip — and usually several times — I see something so beautiful it fills me with awe, pride and gratitude at my good fortune to be born in such an incredible land, and it fills my eyes with more than a little mist. By now, I've made the drive about a dozen times, usually in search of a new job or a new opportunity. In fact, that's how America's romance with cross-country treks began.

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In "The Grapes of Wrath," John Steinbeck dubbed Route 66 the Mother Road, back in 1939. The dusty, windy road from Chicago to Los Angeles was no drive in the park, but it gave hundreds of thousands of Americans a little bit of hope as they tried to escape the Dust Bowl. The road had actually opened in 1926, and in some places, it was barely more than a clearing in the tumbleweeds.

My own love affair with the cross-country drive comes from my father, who was an (almost) original Route 66-er. He served in the military in Arizona during the 1950s and drove back and forth from New Jersey to Fort Huachuca several times – legend has it he sometimes did it in two days. He became a teacher and never lost his wanderlust, so all us kids were packed in the car every summer and drove out west. I've loved rest stops, hotel ice machines and surfing for distant baseball game radio broadcasts even since.

But America's real sense of wanderlust dates almost to the beginning, with Lewis and Clark's harebrained trip to the West Coast. Tales of their journey filled generations of Americans with that quintessentially American sentiment: Somewhere out there, beyond the next mountain range, in the next town, along the next river, there's a better life.

Every journey is a vote for faith and hope. I wondered as I began my Hidden Fee Tour of America during what is still the worst economic calamity since the publication of "The Grapes of Wrath": Do Americans still have hope? Or has cynicism replaced optimism? I will be working on that story for the next few weeks and probably for the next several years. With consumers so beaten down by corporate misbehavior, with Wall Street raking in bonuses while 1 of out of 10 Americans can't make their mortgage payments, with a multinational giant turning our beautiful Gulf of Mexico into a useless sewer, you might think it hard to find hope.

I'm in Montana, which means I'm barely more than halfway across. But I've already found a lot of answers. Here are a few:

* America changes so much once you head west of Chicago.  It's so big, beautiful, clean and calm. As soon as I paid the last charge on the Illinois Tollway heading west, I felt my blood pressure drop.  The right turn up to Wisconsin can fill even the coldest soul with warmth. If you're feeling blue and you have the means, travel at least that far west. I promise you'll feel better.

* Big hearts grow up in small cities, but tragically, they don't stick around. In Fargo, N.D., I heard the same joke from several folks: "Our biggest export is our children." There's nothing to keep the kids at home. Despite a fantastic lifestyle, there are few opportunities. In every small town in America, the young folks are fleeing to the cities. The main industry in great second-tier U.S. cities like Fargo, Billings, Missoula or Bismarck seems to be coffee shops.  If you want more, you leave.

* There's an equal and opposite reaction to that exodus, however. At the very first stop on my trip, in Pittsburgh, I pulled up in front of my meeting place to find a group of men carrying furniture from an apartment into a truck. "Moving out?" I said to the woman there, smiling. "Moving back home," she said back, darkly. Only then I noticed the furniture was going into a garbage truck. She couldn't get a job in her chosen field, school counseling. She couldn't afford to live on her own any longer.

Young people who move to the cities are finding they have little hope of buying a home and raising a family there. They are welcome as young, struggling singles in one-bedroom apartments. But I didn't meet a single 25-year-old who felt confident in his or her prospects to get a yard and have a dog some day. They are faced with this impossible choice: Do they move home and give up opportunity or stay in the city and give up the family? This is the most troubling aspect of American economic life today. We must give our young people hope.

*You see signs bragging about "American Recovery and Reinvestment Act" projects on roads all around the nation — even along seemingly pristine roads that seem to see no more than one or two cars per hour. Because I spend most of my time in parts of the country where potholes are the size of small cars, this is infuriating. There are times where our federalist system seems perfectly silly.

*In a single day, you can easily drive from Columbus, Ohio, to Chicago or even Minneapolis — and drive through about 12 distinct cultures. That's what makes America great. Even in Columbus itself, you can find the Bible belt and you can find a small piece of San Francisco — the city hosts enormous art festivals and gay pride parades. Once you leave Columbus, you hear Rush Limbaugh on seemingly every AM radio station. When in arrive in Chicago, you find the crashing of cultures that gives us everything from Oprah to the Cubs to the blues. Oak Park is a neighborhood of authors and activists that probably rivals Berkeley.  Wisconsin and Minnesota are full of liberal farmers' sons and daughters. But leave Minneapolis and you'll find the heart of sensible conservative America and won't hit a safely liberal region until to cross the Cascade Mountains about two days later. Yet we all live together, somehow. It's amazing.

* Speaking of Limbaugh, he is everywhere.  It seems like his program airs on half the stations in rural America, and his booming voice is inescapable. Having been the target of Limbaugh's misplaced wrath recently, I have my opinion about whether Rush adds cynicism or optimism to the national debate. What's yours?

*Everyone is worried about the oil spill in the Gulf. Everyone.

* I’m still debating whether folks in the middle of the country have more common sense or are more naive than city slickers. I’m wondering who pays more overdraft fees, for example — more on that next week. But in the meantime, some thoughts. These folks sure don’t like cheaters. In downtown Fargo, there’s a huge billboard that reads: “Fargo’s Roger Maris, legitimate home run king.” Barry Bonds and Mark McGwire would probably not get a friendly reception there. On the other hand, many free Wi-Fi hotspots don’t even have sign-up screens, and they certainly don’t have 5,000-word disclaimers. Just connect and surf. It’s kind of nice. I hope the lawyers don’t discover Miles City, Mont. I haven’t paid more than $3 for a beer in the past two weeks, and that’s nice, too.

* Finally, thanks to billboards, small crosses, large memorials on bridges and pictures posted near city halls, you get a deep sense of the ultimate price that's being paid by American families during our wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. That pain hits hard in small towns, but their pride in serving seems to be an even greater force. On Memorial Day weekend, every one of us should take the time to thank a vet and remember the people who give the best years of their lives — and sometimes, their very lives — in an effort to protect us.

I have been humbled by all the efforts readers have made to make my trip easier. Red Tape fans have planned events, suggested roadside stops and, most important, helped me find stories all along the way. One of the best things about being a traveler — a stranger in a strange land— is the generosity you feel overflowing from folks who are so eager to show you their towns, their homes, their quirky traditions. I’ve been able to talk with folks in their cafes, their pubs, their living rooms and their dog parks. Some might have seemed cynical, some liberal, some conservative. But when it came time to see me, all of them shared one thing: They were welcoming. To welcome a stranger is the ultimate act of optimism. And that has led me to this unmistakable conclusion. Certainly, America has hit a bump in the road — no, a large pothole. There’s a lot of yelling and screaming on TV and in newspaper columns. But when you talk to people, when you have genuine encounters, Americans are a generous, loving and optimistic lot.

Not long ago, I saw Arlo Guthrie in concert. He was in Seattle, preaching to "his people," one would think. But he told an incredibly moving story that I'll paraphrase here: He's traveled every corner of the country, and when he was young, he tried to seek out those who agreed with his point of view on things. But the older he's gotten, the more he's seen that there are really two kinds of people in America, and they aren't Republicans and Democrats or liberals and conservatives. There are people who care and people who don't. And he found that he had much more in common with the people who care — whatever their views — than the people who didn't get involved in anything.

My trip has taught me that Americans are angry with being mistreated, neglected and bilked. They are tired of being taken advantage of. But they certainly aren't tired of caring, and that means we'll be OK.

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CHICAGO -- Gary Kopycinski teaches religion and ethics in a suburban Chicago Catholic high school, but his effort to practice what he preaches made him the perfect target for a debt settlement company.

Three years ago, Kopycinski was told by several advisers that he should file for bankruptcy. His finances were a wreck. He held $35,000 in credit card debt and was on the hook for a car loan that he'd co-signed for a family member. On his salary as Catholic high school teacher, it seemed there was no other way but to wave a white flag. But Kopycinski believed that bankruptcy "was a cop-out," so he went searching for an alternative. When he heard an advertisement for Debt Settlement USA, he thought he'd found it. Instead, he had hooked his fortunes to an industry that the attorney general of Illinois, Lisa Madigan, calls "a scam."

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The advertisements are hard to resist, with come-ons like these: "Debts settled for pennies on the dollar," "An open phone line has been established for consumers who need relief," and even, "Don't declare bankruptcy, that should be your last option."

Kopycinski, who  was already treading water in 2007 when the car loan payments landed on him, fell for the pitch.

"I was at the point where I was using Peter to pay Paul," he said. "Then I just wasn't able to keep up with the payments and I was falling behind. Finally, I was at the point where I was so far behind I didn't know what I was going to do." 

Phone calls from creditors were coming fast and furious, and as time passed, they got "nastier and nastier."

"Then I got really worried," he said. "I was getting to a place I didn't want to be."

A friend and a financial counselor both advised him to file bankruptcy, but he wanted another option.

"In my mind I understood that bankruptcy was a cop-out and that it meant you weren't fulfilling your responsibilities," he said.

Instead, he took up Debt Settlement USA on its offer. Agents told him they had special relationships with the credit card firms, and had great success at trimming up to 50 percent off customers'  bills. For 14 percent of his total debt, the firm said it would negotiate with creditors on his behalf. And agents told him he wouldn't have to deal with nasty phone calls or legal threats any more.

"Just tell them you are in debt settlement," he was told by one operator.

Instead of continuing to make his payments, Kopycinski said Debt Settlement USA employees told him to set aside $650 each month to build an account that would be used for settlement offers later. But as is typical of debt settlement firms, Debt Settlement USA made sure its bill was paid first. So it collected $442 of each monthly payment toward its total $4,552 fee.  After eight crushing payments, Kopycinski had only built $1,800 toward his debt, but Debt Settlement USA had been credited with $3,566.

Patricia Dose, Debt Settlement USA's general counsel, said her firm never tells consumers not to pay their bills, adding that by the time consumers come to them they've already stopped paying in most cases. She said she could not comment on Kopycinski's specific situation, citing privacy concerns, but that the firm charges up-front fees that are similar to fees charged by bankruptcy attorneys.

"It's all disclosed in the contract," she said. "… We're very up front with our consumers. Everybody wants to be paid for their services."

Kopycinski tells a different account. He says he started faithfully paying into his settlement savings account, but the phone calls never stopped. Some creditors even tried to talk sense into him.

"I remember one guy from a bank just started screaming at me, yelling, 'This is what's going to happen! This is what's going to happen!" he said. "When I tried to explain what I was doing, he just yelled louder."

When he told his Debt Settlement USA counselor about the exchange, he remembers the operator acting surprised.

"He said, 'Wow, I know him. I deal with him all the time. He must really not like you for some reason," Kopycinski said.

Then, he was sued by Chase, which was now seeking $17,000 from him.  A notice of the lawsuit was left on his back porch.

Afraid, he called his counselor at Debt Settlement USA, who transferred him to the company's legal department. There, an operator directed him to a website with free legal forms and helped him fill out a motion to dismiss the case for improper service. Kopycinski had to figure out for himself where in downtown Chicago to file the paperwork. 

Dose, however, said her firm might provide some "general information" but it does not offer legal advice.

In the end, the motion was filed incorrectly and Kopycinski received notice that a default judgment had been entered against him.

With his debt ballooning, his debt settlement strategy blowing up in his face and the legal walls closing in, Kopycinski knew he had run out of options. He went to a legal aid agency and filed for bankruptcy.  But he'd learned more about the process since then, so he filed Chapter 13 -- which means that while debtors can no longer harass him, he will be repaying  all his debt -- in his case, within five years. Today, he is making $1,190 payments every month, via cashier's check.

"It was very humbling, humiliating, but I did it," he said. "At least I am protected now."

Madigan, the Illinois attorney general whose office has filed seven lawsuits against debt settlement firms, is investigating Kopycinski 's complaint.

She said the worst part of his story is that his good nature and sense of responsibility were used against him.

"It just breaks my heart," she said. "... To me the crime of all of this is you've got good people who, when economy was different, got in over their heads."

Addressing Kopycinski, she added, "Now, you're trying to do the right thing to pay off your debt, but instead you get completely scammed. You're in a much worse financial circumstance, your credit is destroyed. It makes your life impossible."

Had Kopycinski began paying his debts through Chapter 13 two years ago, instead of signing up with debt settlement, his monthly payments would today be considerably less. And he would be $3,500 richer. He advises anyone else in the same spot to avoid the promises of debt settlement.

"You're going to end up with some joker on the phone pulling your strings and telling you where to go and giving you incomplete, inaccurate advice. Everything they say isn't true," he said, holding back tears. "They do not have relationships with the credit card companies. ... What was $35,000 in debt turned into maybe $60,000."

Madigan also recommends that consumers should steer clear of the debt settlement strategy.

"Consumers should never get involved with debt settlement companies," she said. "Hundreds of Illinois residents have come to our office who have fallen prey to what is essentially an outright scam.  You can do everything yourself.  You can figure out how much you make a month and reach out to creditors."

She said 40 percent of the people who sign up with debt settlement firms end up like Kopycinski, filing for bankruptcy anyway, and two-thirds drop out before even a single debt is settled.

"Folks are finding they are paying an enormous amount of money up front for fees and are getting virtually none of their debt settled," she said. "They are told to not contact creditors.  We see time and again people are told not continue to pay their bills. Well, the credit card companies don't take kindly to that. They sue people."

Dose, the debt settlement firm's lawyer, objected to characterization of debt settlement as a scam, adding sarcastically, "Then it's as much of a scam as consumer credit counseling is." Counseling services are paid in part by banks, she noted, and consumers who enroll in them must pay 100 percent of their debt.  She could provide no statistics on how many consumers complete their debt settlement program with her firm, but said many consumers benefit even from partial completion because Debt Settlement USA is able to obtain settlements on some of their debts.

In Illinois, what happened to Kopycinski will soon be expressly illegal. The state Legislature passed a law earlier this month that will prohibit debt settlement companies from collecting large up-front fees. Aside from a small sign-up fee, the firms will only be able to collect a percentage of the debt after they have earned settlements with debtors.

The ads persist, however, as other states have yet to enact strict regulation of the practice.

Dose said the Illinois law targeting debt settlement firms will harm the state's consumers.

"They probably won't have a lot of the options consumers in other states have," she said.  "None of this is easy. ... People who come to us understand that none of this is a cakewalk."

She added said that debt settlement is a better choice than bankruptcy for some consumers because settlement firms take their payments in monthly installments, while many bankruptcy attorneys require full payment before they will begin.

"Debt settlement is just one option out of three that people have," she said.

It's hard to find anyone outside of the debt settlement industry who sees its benefits, however.  Consumers who have large debts should visit a nonprofit agency like the National Foundation for Credit Counseling at http://www.nfcc.org/.  And no consumer should agree to pay an up-front fee of more than $100 for help with credit card debt.

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COLUMBUS, Ohio -- It's no secret that the recession has caused many drivers to postpone a new car purchase and hang on to an old clunker or buy a used vehicle instead. But there’s a drawback to keeping an older car: the threat of hefty repair bills. Enter opportunistic extended automobile warranty companies.

Linda Crowe of Columbus, Ohio, left, thought she was making a safe, conservative choice two years ago when she purchased a three-year old truck with 30,000 miles on it. But the vehicle's manufacturer's warranty was about to expire, and the deluge of extended warranty junk mail she soon received got her thinking: What would she do if the car's transmission failed in two years? So she signed up with California-based Auto One Warranty, and thought she'd purchased protection for up to 100,000 miles. Peace of mind, she thought, was worth the $2,918 price tag.

Instead, she had merely acquired a two-year headache, and a fight with a firm that would soon declare bankruptcy and ultimately face a lawsuit by Ohio Attorney General Richard Cordray.

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The industry has received a sizable black eye recently: Two other extended warranty firms were also sued by Cordray's office – and eight other state attorneys general -- in April.

While Crowe's story has a happy ending, her tale is a warning to other consumers who might consider purchasing additional protection for their vehicles: Always ask questions and do some research before signing on with unfamiliar companies for any product.

Crowe had second thoughts after purchasing her warranty, and within three weeks, she requested a refund. Her contract indicated she had 30 days to cancel the deal, but that promise turned out to just part of the sales pitch.

"They told me it would take up to 10 weeks to get a refund," she said. "I called after 10 weeks they said it was still in process." Thus began a ritual that continued for months. She would call, and an Auto One representative would say the refund was still in the works. "They lied and just kept on continuing to lie," she said.

(Auto One representatives could not be contacted for comment. Calls to the phone number listed on Auto One's Web site returned only an "all circuits are busy" message.)

After six months, she called American Express and tried to initiate a consumer dispute, but it was too late. Unscrupulous firms that want to avoid what are called "chargebacks" in the credit card business will often try to stall customers, as chargebacks are generally impossible after 90 days.

"My problem was I had faith they were going to give me back the money because they kept telling me 'It's in the works; it's in the works,'" Crowe said.

About that time, Crowe did some Internet research and discovered a cascade of complaints about Auto One. She also found out the company had an "F" rating with the Better Business Bureau. It was a harsh lesson.

"The big thing I want other people to know is before you buy anything, before you sign a contract look at the attorney general's site. Look at the BBB site, because it's all there," she said. "If we would have went there in the beginning...we wouldn't have made that purchase to begin with."

About one year ago, Crowe contacted Cordray's office and filed a formal complaint, and learned that there were dozens of complaints about warranty companies piling up.

More letters were traded, but Crowe still wasn't getting anywhere. She was told that Cordray was readying a lawsuit against the firm, but in March she absorbed the biggest blow yet -- an Auto One telephone operator told her the company was closing.

Losing nearly $3,000 would hurt anyone, but it was particularly painful for Crowe, a social worker who asked that her employer not be identified.

"I really thought, 'Well that's it. We've lost $2,900 and we're not going to get it back,' and it really made me sick because I am this far away from retirement," she said. "For me that's a lot of money just to throw away. I was really disheartened."

But Crowe just "couldn't forget about it."  And one last time, she pulled out all her paperwork and scoured it. Suddenly, she noticed a critical detail she'd missed before: While Auto One sold her the warranty, a firm named ACSC (Automobile Customer Service Corp.), based in Huntsville, Ala., was actually the warranty provider. So she tracked the company down and called.

"And they told me, 'I'm sorry ma'am. I hate to say this, but Auto One took your money. ... You won't get it back," Crowe recalled. She said the operator also told her that ACSC had never received any money from Auto One.

But Crowe, undeterred, shared this new information with Cordray's office, which intervened.

Raw video interview with Crowe on Facebook

Last week, she received a check for $2,912 in the mail from ACSC. The firm told her it was making an exception in her case, refunding money it had never received.

An operator at ACSC told msnbc.com that the company had "no comment" on Crowe's story.

Crowe, on the other hand, said, "I am very grateful to them. But I think the attorney general had something to do with it. I'm still a bit in a state of shock that I got the money."

Not all extended warranties are scams, but Cordray says consumers should beware that third-party companies often mislead consumers, offering  "bumper-to-bumper" plans full of exclusions that often aren't disclosed clearly to consumers.  And in the lawsuits filed against coverage providers, Cordray found many complaints of unfair coverage denials.

"These service contacts can be protection for you, but you just need to careful you understand exactly what's being offered, what the exclusions are, what the prices are and what the terms are," he said.   "They are being advertised as the same as warranties when in fact it often is not the case."  

Cordray also said that businesses that seem obstinate at first  will offer refunds or other compensation after an attorney general's office gets involved. That's why he encourages complaints (and maybe why he gets 30,000 of them each year.) Of course, not every one has a happy ending, and Cordray cheered Crowe's persistence and her decision to re-read all her paperwork when all seemed lost. But he gently chided her as well, and all consumers who sign up with a company before they read up on it.

"It tells you that the first time (she read the contract) wasn't good enough," he said.  "One rule of thumb ... if you don't understand something, then you shouldn't be signing it."

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Here's a new Beltway term you should get used to hearing -- "bill shock."  You've heard about cell phone users who suddenly find themselves burdened by a $5,000 or $10,000 bill for a single month, rung up by a hyper-texting child or excessive Internet downloads.  This week, the Federal Communications Commission very sensibly recommended that wireless carriers be forced to send a mid-month text message warning to any customer who suddenly rings up enormous charges.

That's one small victory for consumers, but the giant leap is still to come.

Red Tape Chronicles readers know a thing or two about "bill shock." Crazy cable bills, outrageous hotel fees, unfair overdraft charges -- American consumers are under siege at historic levels. A nagging recession and high unemployment levels make examination of scams and unfair fees even more critical.

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So after four years, 400 blog posts, 2 books, and 120,000 comments, Red Tape is taking to the road.  Starting today, I'll be visiting a dozen cities on a 15-day fee-fighting journey. My dog Lucky will be with me, helping me sniff out scams from Washington D.C. to Seattle. He's already helped -- you should see the fees some hotels charge when you are traveling with a dog! (In Pittsburgh, $25 a night extra was standard, but the Shadyside Inn wanted to charge me $90! The Red Roof Inn I'm staying at is charging less than that for both of us).

 So ride along on this trip. Along the way, we'll meet a widow who paid $1,500 for the extra security of an extended warranty, only to lose everything when the firm went out of business.  We'll talk with folks who fell for credit card settlement scams and the attorney general who just pushed through the boldest new law in the land to prevent such scams.  We'll meet kids trying to pay for college, adults struggling to pay off oppressive loans, consumers who have fired their banks in favor of credit unions, and plenty of Americans who are just plain fed up with unfair treatment.  We'll talk over coffee, tea, beer and dog walks. We'll visit local NBC stations, book stores, and neighborhoods. Many of the stops have been planned with the help of readers who have generously volunteered their time to help organize town hall-style meetings.

You can follow the day-to-day travels by signing up as a Facebook fan (click here)

This week, I'll be in Pittsburgh; Wheeling, W.Va.; Columbus, Ohio; Chicago, and Madison, Wis.  If you are along the path, check the Facebook page for updates on where I'll be on any given day.  And of course, we'll be bringing you several stories on msnbc.com through the Red Tape Chronicles. 

Welcome to the Red Tape on the Road Hidden Fee Tour of America. Now, on to Pittsburgh!

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