We were lucky to catch up with Michelle Couch-friedman recently and have shared our conversation below.

Michelle , appreciate you joining us today. So let’s jump to your mission – what’s the backstory behind how you developed the mission that drives your brand?

Consumer Rescue is an entirely mission-driven organization. I am a consumer advocate, reporter and an ombudsman columnist dedicated to educating and defending consumers. I created Consumer Rescue as a service to the community.

My team and I are passionate about what we do; working daily to rescue consumers from the challenging problems they’ve encountered with a business. We’re skilled mediators and consumer investigators with an incredible track record of resolving consumer problems. The best part of our work for consumers? We do it free of charge.

And because we’re a virtual organization, we’re not limited to any specific area. Consumers from around the country — and the world can ask our team for our free mediation services.

The Consumer Rescue advocacy team focuses heavily on solving (often dramatic) travel-related issues. However, consumers contact us with requests for help with everything from travel to product problems, scams, credit card disputes, and other issues. Basically, if you’re a consumer and have a problem with a company that you can’t fix on your own, we’re here to assist. Https://ConsumerRescue.org/gethelp/

In addition to mediating consumer problems, we publish articles about our efforts on https://consumerrescue.org. In this way, we can help more than just one consumer at a time. These articles tell the often surprising and frustrating tales of all types of consumer predicaments, from missed cruises to false car rental damage charges to scams and more. Each column ends with tips and guidance that the reader can use to hopefully avoid a similar fate.

We also provide a customer service and executive contact finder for consumers. We know that it is often difficult in this age of artificial intelligence to find a real person at a company who can not only listen to your problem but also has the authority to fix it. That’s where Consumer Rescue’s Research Valet can save the day. Frustrated consumers can send a request to our research director, Meera Sundram, and provide the name of the company they’re battling. She’ll quickly provide the name and contact information of a person we know to be responsive and helpful at that business. https://consumerrescue.org/research-valet/

Lastly, I publish a free weekly newsletter that provides additional tips and guidance for consumers and friendly commentary covering a wide range of topics. https://consumerrescue.org/newsletter-subscribe/

Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers.

I’m a trained psychotherapist; however, after many years in that field, I accepted a position as the executive director of a nonprofit focused on tackling consumer-related issues rather than mental-health-related ones.

It really wasn’t that far of a jump, actually. Consumers battling problems with businesses are often frustrated and even tormented by the situation in which they’ve found themselves. That’s especially true when there are thousands and thousands of dollars on the line, and the customer is being stonewalled. Sometimes, the consumers have hit a virtual brick wall in their efforts to find even one person at the company who will listen to the details of their problem — and — who also has the ability to help.

During my years serving the nonprofit, I found that I could put my formal psychological training to good use as I investigated and mediated the requests for help that landed on my desk. I discovered that I had a knack for solving consumer problems and that I really enjoyed the work. Of course, not all problems can be solved and sometimes just offering the consumer my sympathetic ear was all I could provide — but a valuable service in its own way.

In addition to directly serving consumers, as the executive director, I developed strategies for the nonprofit to put our organization in front of the widest audience possible — which allowed us to help more and more people in need of our services.

At the end of my over half-a-decade tenure, those strategies had directly caused a nearly 10-fold increase in requests for our help to our advocacy team. In fact, at the height of the pandemic, I was responding to up to 75 emails per day! But I loved it. Especially given that we were all isolated in our homes — it was my connection out into the world.

When my service to the nonprofit and its founder came to its conclusion, it was only logical that I continued my mission as a passionate consumer advocate, investigator and columnist. And, so, Consumer Rescue was born! I built this organization from the ground up with the same strategies, methodologies, ideas and compassion that I brought to the table at the nonprofit I led for over half a decade.

Today, I have the same dedicated team at my side who came with me here to Consumer Rescue — a team of truly loyal and expert editors, advocates, researchers and just really good people who I consider to be not only my colleagues but my friends as well. https://consumerrescue.org/about-consumer-rescue/

Consumers contacting our advocacy team can be assured they will receive a friendly, caring, and personalized response to their request.

In addition to my work at Consumer Rescue, I also write a bi-monthly ombudsman column for The Points Guy; mediating consumer problems for readers there too. https://thepointsguy.com/author/michelle-friedman/

Let’s talk about resilience next – do you have a story you can share with us?

When I’m mediating cases for consumers, there are times when a company will not see things my way. If I’m sure that the consumer has the details on their side and that the business has made a mistake, I will find additional ways to prove the case. My goal is always to make the consumer whole. The Consumer Rescue site is filled with tales where the mediation wasn’t easy and I had to do additional investigation and find ways to illustrate the problem and the solution that should be the outcome.

For instance, just recently I had a case in which a car rental customer contacted me after he had been charged for returning a vehicle with a shattered window. This accusation came as a shock to him since he told me he returned the car with all the windows intact. But the car rental company wasn’t backing down and charged him nearly $500 for the damage. That’s when the consumer sent his request for help to Consumer Rescue. I investigated the case and sent my findings over to my executive contact at Avis for a review. It seemed to me highly unlikely that a shattered window could have been overlooked in the return lane of a well-lit outdoor car rental lot.

Well, then the local franchise had another defense for the charge. Their front-line employees claimed that the customer had returned the car with the windows rolled down, and that’s why the damage had gone undetected. He claimed when he rolled the window up, the shattered window was revealed. But when I saw the photos of the shattered window (still intact in the window frame), I knew someone along the line at the agency was telling a fib. There was no possible way to roll a window down or up in the state it was in. I took the photo and sent it back to our executive and offered my opinion of what had happened there (Likely an employee had accidentally damaged the window after the customer returned the car). The picture made the explanation from the franchise impossible to accept.

The customer was vindicated and the car rental company refunded the damage charges. You can read the full story here: https://consumerrescue.org/travel-troubles/hit-with-fake-rental-car-damage-charges-heres-how-to-make-them-go-away/

Do you have any insights you can share related to maintaining high team morale?

At Consumer Rescue, team morale is naturally high because we enjoy working together and know we’re doing good things for people. There is no question, that knowledge itself is a morale booster.

Additionally, my team knows that I’m always just an email, text, or phone call away, ready to chat, brainstorm an idea, or even just to hear or do some venting.

When managing a team, it’s critical that your members are able to trust your words match your actions. The most worthless type of manager is a “yes-guy or gal” with no real stance on any topic — or worse, says one thing and then does something else entirely without explanation.

That isn’t me — to be an effective manager sometimes you must have difficult conversations. My team members over the years have told me that they appreciate my honesty and kind, reality-based guidance. And I appreciate the same from them.

That’s how to build a powerful and loyal team.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://consumerrescue.org/
• Instagram: michellecouchfriedman
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/michellecouchfriedman
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/michelle-couch-friedman/
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/MiCouchFriedman
• Other: https://thepointsguy.com/author/michelle-friedman/ https://www.pinterest.com/michellecouchfriedman/