“Who steals my purse steals trash … but he that filches from me my good name robs me of that which not enriches him and makes me poor indeed.” (“Othello,” William Shakespeare)

We could not begin to count the number of times during the past 33 years that grateful and well-intentioned consumers have approached Northeast COMBAT volunteers or board members saying, “I said I was going to contact COMBAT and the business immediately changed its attitude and gave me what I wanted.”

While it is good to be loved and appreciated, there is a dark side to using COMBAT’s good name to encourage cooperation.

If you have a dispute with a company and are making no headway, mentioning that you intend to contact COMBAT for help is not inherently wrong, any more than saying you intend to contact any helping organization. Using COMBAT to threaten, however, gives a misleading impression of how Maine’s consumer organization does business.

Even more damaging have been those instances where a consumer has told a merchant “COMBAT told me to do, or said, this,” when the consumer had never even contacted us. There is no way we can assess the damage to our reputation as a fair-minded consumer group that might occur from such misrepresentations.

COMBAT has rigid standards under which it has operated since the very first consumer complaint was received at our volunteer office in 1972. Every contact with COMBAT is logged, assigned a case number, and the records kept forever. In all cases, we ask the consumer to do as much as he or she can with our advice and assistance before we attempt to intervene directly.

We almost always first advise the consumer to maintain a respectful attitude and to contact the highest level executive at the business (owner, manager, chief executive officer). Most often, the closer to the top the more likely that person will be receptive, mindful of the company reputation for consumer satisfaction, and to have the authority to make a decision and stand by it. Very often, a consumer is able to resolve his or her own problem by going to the top.

For consumers tempted to use COMBAT like a gun to the head of a company, when you haven’t even contacted us, you aren’t helping anyone, yourself included. Our effectiveness is often based on our reputation for fairness and objectivity. Truly, we are tenacious when there has been a violation of consumer rights or a business is clearly guilty of sloppy or unethical practices, but we also champion consumer responsibility. Besmirch our good name and you lessen the chance we will be effective when we next contact that company.

For businesspeople reading this column, if a consumer tries to bludgeon you with COMBAT’s name, quoting what we allegedly told him to do, call us to confirm that the customer has actually contacted our office and exactly what we said. If we have made a mistake, we will own up to it. Much as we expect companies to take responsibility, we demand the same of ourselves and our volunteers.

In the 27 years COMBAT has been addressing consumer inquiries through Consumer Forum, we have had only one complaint about our performance, and that was from two entertainers who questioned whether we had the right to question their business practices and perhaps “write them up” in the newspaper (which, by the way, was never even considered). That record speaks for itself.

Now do us a favor by contacting us before you start bandying our good name about.

Consumer Forum is a collaboration of the Bangor Daily News and Northeast COMBAT-Maine Center for the Public Interest, Maine’s membership-funded, nonprofit consumer organization. Individual membership $25, business rates start at $125 (0-10 employees). For help and information write: Consumer Forum, Bangor Daily News, PO Box 1329, Bangor 04402-1329.