An article this past Saturday had a title that caught my eye, “Debt charity demands watchdogs stop the imposters.” The article said that CCCS here in the UK was upset that some companies were running online adverts using the keyword CCCS and that was misleading web surfers. 

But what made me chuckle is that CCCS in the UK liberated the CCCS name from the US, without permission. Oh how I do love irony.

The original Consumer Credit Counseling Services (CCCS) group in the US is part of the National Foundation for Credit Counseling, which begin in 1951.

In the UK the parent company was cleverly named the Foundation for Credit Counselling and the company is called Consumer Credit Counselling Services (CCCS) and began in 1993. Damn guys, just missed picking that original name by 42 years; that was close. Is this a freak accident, mere coincidence, or did CCCS UK intend to mislead people that it was somehow affiliated with CCCS in the US? Either way it can definitely create confusion among web users.

Can someone at CCCS HQ please tell a person in charge that rather than wonder who’s poached the CCCS name last, maybe some outspoken comments about the banks not living up to the British Banking Code would be a lot more useful for UK consumers.

It seems incredulous that CCCS UK would get its britches in a bunch since they appear to have nicked the name first. I guess the researchers at Which? overlooked that fact when they were doing their research for the story. Maybe we should change their name to Whoops!

Just to make sure I remembered this correctly I contacted the NFCC in the United States and Nick Jacobs, the PR Director, confirmed that there is no relationship between CCCS UK and the NFCC. Shhhhh, don’t tell the guys at Debt Free Me that got beat up in the article for advertising on Google using the CCCS keyword. Maybe they were targeting CCCS in the US?

The Guardian article said, “The OFT said it was aware of traders using names similar to other organisations and the potential for confusion: "In our consideration of a trader's fitness to hold a consumer credit licence we investigate all complaints and where we have the necessary evidence we do take appropriate action." I wonder how they’d feel about the liberation of the CCCS name in the UK from the US?

It's not like CCCS UK didn't know about the US original operation before they accidently came up with the same name. From the UK operation website "Credit counselling started in the USA...Vic Ware O.B.E. and Malcolm Hurlston introduced CCCS into the UK in 1993 through a pilot scheme established in Leeds to test whether the approach, which worked well in the USA, could be equally effective in the UK." I guess that included the name as well.

Again, from the article “A spokeswoman for the charity said it was upset that vulnerable people could be misled when trying to find them on the internet. It is compiling a dossier of complaints, which it is sending to the Office of Fair Trading.” Oh, again, the irony.

Who do we report CCCS UK to if web surfers are looking for CCCS US and wind up on the UK doorstep instead? Maybe it is time for CCCS Deux to change the borrowed name to something original.