Don’t you love it when those consumer-protection segments on the local TV news can cut through the red tape and solve a viewer’s dispute with a business after all previous efforts had failed? Contact Denver7 got involved in Ms. Angello’s case in March. They drove out to the Gaylord to order a coffee and ask some hard-nosed questions: Didn’t a single customer spending nearly $6,000 in your shop raise any red flags? Didn’t it seem a little strange that, on Christmas Eve, one of your baristas suddenly yelled, “I’m rich!” and ran out of the store, never to be seen again? (OK, that didn’t really happen.) Denver7 also hounded Angello’s bank, USAA, which said they were working on the problem. Then, just a couple of hours after the TV news had contacted USAA, the bank put the money back in Angello’s account.
This story has a footnote that didn’t get a lot of attention in the Contact Denver7 segment. This little twist doesn’t appear in the online story and is only briefly mentioned at the end of the video report (via YouTube). The refund the Gaylord processed in January would have gone through if Angello hadn’t canceled her debit card, claiming fraud. Angello would have been better off keeping her card because the case of the $5,700 latte wasn’t fraud. It was more like a typo.
