Meet Michelle Couch-Friedman | Founder, Consumer advocate and ombudsman columnist

We had the good fortune of connecting with Michelle Couch-Friedman and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Michelle, is your business focused on helping the community? If so, how?
I’m the founder and CEO of Consumer Rescue (https://ConsumerRescue.org/). I’m also a consumer advocate and an ombudsman columnist at The Points Guy.

The purpose of Consumer Rescue is to educate, protect and directly defend consumers. We accomplish this in a variety of ways.

1) Through journalism. We write and publish articles that cover important topics in an effort to empower our readers to avoid common consumer problems. I make certain that each article ends with helpful tips and guidance.

2) Direct consumer advocacy. When a consumer finds themselves in a dispute with a company that they can’t resolve despite their good faith effort, they can submit a request for free mediation help to our advocacy team at https://ConsumerRescue.org/gethelp/ I’ve successfully mediated thousands of cases between consumers and companies over the years and retrieved hundreds of thousands of dollars for troubled travelers and other consumers (but I do focus heavily on travel related problems).

3) Media appearances. I always make myself available to media outlets to discuss consumer-related problems, issues, and scams in an effort to reach and help the widest audience possible. My consumer guidance has been cited in The Wall Street Journal, CNBC, The Points Guy, CNN, MSN, Travel and Leisure, Conde Nast Traveler, Readers Digest among others

Everything that we do at Consumer Rescue comes free of charge for consumers.

What should our readers know about your business?
Consumer Rescue is dedicated to educating, defending, and protecting consumers. Any person who has a problem with a company can ask our team for help, and we’ll investigate. As our organization is virtual, we can assist consumers from around the country and the world.

Our mediation services are always free of charge. If you’ve got a problem with a company, our team is here, ready to investigate and advocate for you directly with the business involved.

We also publish helpful articles about our advocacy efforts so that we can help more than just one consumer at a time. And I am an ombudsman columnist at The Points Guy and do consumer advocacy work there as well. (https://thepointsguy.com/author/michelle-friedman/)

We’re here to rescue consumers from problems with companies that they are unable to resolve on their own. We do it in a caring and logical way. The businesses that we mediate cases with recognize that the resolutions we seek for consumers are always reasonable and in line with the terms and conditions of the company. Our goal is to make each consumer who contacts us “whole.” That is to say, we aim to fix the problem in a way that is fair to both sides of the customer/company equation. We hold companies to their terms and conditions, and we do it in a friendly, cordial way so that everyone feels good at the end of the mediation process.

Who else deserves some credit and recognition?

As a licensed clinical social worker, I’ve been an advocate all of my adult life in one form or another. In my early career, I was a psychotherapist to patients with severe mental illness on a secure care unit of a psychiatric hospital in Brooklyn, New York. I found this work very fulfilling, and I very much enjoyed working with my patients and their families. But it was also quite challenging — and sometimes even dangerous. The Secure Care Unit was where patients in acute psychiatric distress were treated until their medications could be adjusted properly. It was not uncommon for patients on this ward to physically assault staff members. In fact, on one occasion, I was assaulted by a patient who was having a psychotic break, and I suffered a concussion and a broken nose. With the encouragement and support of my mentors, coworkers and my patients, I dusted myself off and returned to work after just several days.

I believe that my mentors (especially my direct clinical supervisor, Johanna) and the challenging experiences in my early career toughed me up and made me resilient.  I’ve used those skills to become the determined investigative consumer reporter and caring advocate I am today.

In 2015, I shifted my focus to consumer advocacy. I began volunteering as a consumer advocate for the journalist Christopher Elliott. I found that with consumer advocacy, I could still help people in need, but in a different way and without the same level of stress/danger as my previous job. When Christopher’s organization became a nonprofit in 2018, he asked me to become the executive director.

Over the years, I mediated thousands and thousands of problems between troubled consumers and businesses. With Christopher’s encouragement, I began writing articles about the cases I had mediated.

I soon realized that I enjoyed telling these stories because then I wasn’t just helping one consumer at a time. By writing and publishing articles about my advocacy work, I was able to reach a much wider audience of people who might also be able to learn from those problematic situations.

As the executive director of the nonprofit, my responsibilities also included creating and implementing strategies that would cause our readership to increase — so we could help more consumers. I began taking classes to learn everything about online publishing. I became a Search Engine Optimization specialist and content strategist. I took IT classes to learn coding and ways to detect technical problems on a website — things that were all, in those early days, far out of my comfort zone. But I soon found that I enjoyed all aspects of running a successful website and consumer advocacy organization. The nonprofit’s readership doubled and then tripled, and media outlets around the world began to cite our advocacy work. The number of requests for help from troubled consumers exploded — sometimes up to 1000 per month. Our small advocacy team was helping more consumers than ever. It was very exciting to see just how many people we were directly able to assist every month.

Earlier this year, I stepped down as the executive director of the nonprofit. With Christopher’s blessing and encouragement, I opened Consumer Rescue. His long-term trust and confidence in my mediation skills, management, editorial and business strategies and his belief that no goal was beyond our reach led me down this logical path to becoming the founder of my own consumer advocacy organization now that my service to the nonprofit is complete.

Today, at Consumer Rescue, I have a team of loyal and accomplished editors, writers and advocates at my side who definitely deserve a shoutout as well! (https://consumerrescue.org/about-consumer-rescue/) Most of these fabulous professionals have been with me from the beginning of my career as a consumer advocate and ombudsman columnist. All along the way, they’ve cheered me on and motivated me to keep fighting the good fight for consumers. I am deeply grateful for each one of these caring and dedicated colleagues.

Website: https://ConsumerRescue.org/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/michellecouchfriedman/

Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/michelle-couch-friedman/

Twitter: https://twitter.com/MiCouchFriedman

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/michellecouchfriedman

Other: I’m also an ombudsman columnist for The Points Guy. Here is a link to my author page there: https://thepointsguy.com/author/michelle-friedman/