Black Women Invest Founder Expands Local Chapters And Offers 3 Tips For Beginners
Schelo D. Collier launched a 13,000-member community aimed at getting Black women to invest.
Originlly Published Nov. 19, 2023.
Meet Schelo D. Collier, a visionary leader in finance and real estate investment who launched a 13,000-member community aimed at getting Black women to invest.
Black Women Invest is aimed at empowering Black Women to excel in their financial pursuits. Launched after Collier lost her “dream job,” she embarked on a mission to align women who look like her and who want to take the lead in securing their financial future.
“I was motivated to launch Black Women Invest after my “dream job” ended abruptly. I was suddenly faced with the realization that my financial well-being was truly up to me,” she tells BLACK ENTERPRISE.
“If I continued to rely on someone else to write my checks, then this situation could happen again,” she adds. “So, I went on a search to find like-minded women who were also on their investment journeys. I desired a supportive community; however, the research revealed a surprising lack of dedicated platforms for Black Women. Instead, I found that more groups were focused on saving and budgeting—not investing. Therefore, I started Black Women Invest to provide Black women with a safe place to flourish and learn tangible investing strategies together.”
With a passion for breaking stigmas around investing, Collier has seen more women stick to budgeting rather than taking an active initiative in investing their money.
“Some of the biggest stigmas I hear include the misconception that you need a lot of money to invest, which is far from the truth,” she says. “First, women need education, and then they need consistency. I teach people that even $50 a month can make a difference in your long-term portfolio.”
“Another stigma is that investing is like gambling. This fear of financial loss comes from a lack of knowledge,” she adds. “Black women might perceive investing as risky behavior, particularly if they don’t have a good understanding of what they’re investing in. Getting educated helps them to overcome that fear.”
With chapters in Miami, Houston, Atlanta, Washington, D.C., Charlotte, and an online community, Collier is looking to grow Black Women Invest by connecting women from all facets of life. For anyone still skeptical about investing, Collier offers these tips.
Understand your risk tolerance level. You can assess this by asking yourself the following questions:
How would I react if my investments lost a significant amount of value?
How much money can I afford to lose?
When will I need access to my money?
How do I honestly feel about market volatility?
Set your goals. What are you planning to do when you reach your investment goals? Are you investing to buy a house, planning for retirement, or paying for your children to go to college? That should help you determine the types of investments you get into; such as real estate, index funds, or passively or actively investing into stocks, etc.
Choose the right investment strategy for you. I had a woman join our group who wanted to invest further in her stock portfolio, but she was already at retirement age. So when we discussed the best strategy for her goals and timeline, we realized that it would make the most sense for her to convert her basement into a new living quarters and rent it out. And that’s precisely what she did, she now rents it out to travel nurses and earns a profit. Investing is not just about stocks.
Artificial Intelligence (AI) mimics the cognitive functions of the human mind, particularly in learning and problem-solving. Many of the apps that we use today are powered by AI. From voice-activated virtual assistants to e-commerce, AI applications are everywhere.
With the advancements in AI technology and access to big data, companies across different industries are integrating AI into their processes to find solutions to complex business problems.
The application of AI is most noticeable within the retail and e-commerce space. Websites and apps can interact intelligently with customers, creating a personalized approach that enhances the customer experience.
No matter what industry your business operates in, these seven tips can help you acquire and retain customers more efficiently at a fraction of the time it takes to do things manually.
How to Use AI to Get and Keep Customers
1. Identify Gaps in Your Content Marketing Strategy
If you’re just starting with content marketing, you’ll need to know what type of content to create.
Using AI, you can identify gaps, find fixes, and evaluate the performance of your content marketing campaign.
Take Packlane, a company that specializes in custom package designs, for example. They create high-quality content like helpful blog posts that provide valuable information. At the same time, the content they publish makes it easier for their target market to understand their brand and services.
If you’re in the retail or e-commerce space, you can use AI to identify the gaps in your content marketing. Your content may be focused on your products and their features, but you can determine the relevant content that addresses your audience’s needs and pain points through AI.
2. Pre-Qualify Prospects and Leads
Not every visitor to your site will become a paying customer. If you’re not getting sales despite the massive traffic, it means you’re generating low-quality leads.
Some reasons why this happens include:
Targeting the wrong audience
Poor content marketing strategy
Using the wrong type of signup form
Promoting on the wrong social media platforms
Ineffective calls to action
These mistakes can be rectified with the help of artificial intelligence.
AI tools can extract relevant data to help you learn more about your target audience. These tools also provide predictive analytics on your customers’ behavior. They, in turn, help improve your lead generation strategy because you’ll know which leads to pursue, where to find them, and how to engage them effectively.
3. Provide Personal Recommendations
Brands that tailor their recommendations based on consumer data boost their sales over brands that don’t.
Recommendation systems’ algorithms typically rely on browsing history data, visited pages, and previous purchases. However, AI is so advanced that it can analyze customers’ interactions with site content and find relevant products that interest the individual customer. This way, AI makes it easier to target potential customers and effectively puts the best products in front of the site visitors.
Because of AI, recommendation engines can filter and customize product recommendations based on each customer’s preferences. It’s a cycle of collecting, storing, analyzing, and filtering the available data until it matches the customers’ preferences.
This is an effective way of acquiring and retaining customers because there’s an element of personalization.
4. Reduce Cart Abandonment
A high cart abandonment rate is the bane of e-commerce business owners. According to a study by the Baymard Institute, the rate of online shopping cart abandonment is close to 70%.
Users abandon their online carts for various reasons:
high extra costs
complicated checkout process
privacy concerns
not enough payment methods, or
they’re not ready to buy yet.
Using AI-powered chatbots is one way to reduce cart abandonment. AI chatbots can guide customers through their shopping journey.
AI chatbots can take a conversational approach and give the customer a nudge to prompt them to complete the purchase. These chatbots can also act as a virtual shopping assistant or concierge to let customers know about an on-the-spot discount, a time-sensitive deal, a free shipping coupon, or any other incentives that will encourage them to complete the checkout.
With AI, lost orders due to cart abandonment are recoverable and can lead to an increase in conversion rate for e-commerce businesses.
5. Increase Repurchases With Predictive Analytics
Predictive analytics is the process of making predictions based on historical data using data mining, statistical modeling, artificial intelligence, machine learning, and other techniques. It can generate insights, forecast trends, and predict behaviors based on past and current data.
In marketing, predictive analytics can predict customers’ propensity to repurchase products and their frequency. When used to optimize marketing campaigns, AI-powered predictive analytics can generate customer response, increase repurchases, and promote cross-selling of relevant products.
It’s all part of the hyper-personalized marketing approach, where brands interact and engage with customers and improve their experience by anticipating their needs and exceeding their expectations.
With predictive analytics, you can focus your marketing resources on customer retention and target a highly motivated segment of your market that is more than happy to return and repurchase your products. This approach is less expensive than advertising or implementing pay-per-click campaigns.
6. Improve Your Website User Experience
Every business—big or small—knows the importance of having a website where visitors can interact with the brand, respond to a call to action, or purchase products. But it’s not enough to have an online presence; it’s important that visitors have a great experience while navigating through your site.
What makes for a great user experience? Users have different expectations. Some want faster loading time, while others want a simple and intuitive interface. But most important of all, they want to find what they’re looking for. It could be a product, content, or a solution to a problem. Whatever they may be, it’s up to you to meet their expectations.
With artificial intelligence, you can improve your website user experience tenfold. Here are some of the ways AI can be used to improve user experience.
Search relevance
This pertains to how accurate the search results are in relation to the search query. The more relevant the results are, the better the search experience the users will have. This means they will likely find relevant content to answer their queries or find products that solve their problems.
Personalized recommendations
Content that is tailor-made for the user tends to have greater engagement, which increases the likelihood of conversation. Amazon has perfected the product recommendation system using advanced AI and machine learning. AI uses customer data to gain insights and apply predictive analysis to recommend relevant products for cross-selling opportunities.
AI chatbots
The presence of chatbots contributes to a great user experience because they provide 24/7 assistance and support in the absence of human customer service. Users can get accurate answers to their inquiries quickly and efficiently, compared to scrolling through text-based FAQs.
7. Social Listening for Potential Customers
Social listening is the process of analyzing the conversations, trends, and buzz surrounding your brand across different social media platforms. It’s the next step to monitoring and tracking the social media mentions of your brand and products, hashtags, industry trends, as well as your competitors.
Social listening analyzes what’s behind the metrics and the numbers. It determines the social media sentiment about your brand and everything that relates to it. It helps you understand how people feel about your brand. All the data and information you get through social listening can be used to guide you in your strategy to gain new customers.
Social media monitoring and listening can be done much more efficiently with the help of artificial intelligence. It’s an enormous task for a team of human beings to monitor and analyze data, but with AI-powered social media tools, all the tedious tasks can be automated. They can be trained to leverage data to provide highly accurate insights about your brand.
With AI and machine learning, social listening can easily determine your audience, brand sentiments, shopping behavior, and other important insights. By having this information within reach, you’ll know how you can connect with them more effectively and turn them from prospects to paying customers.
Key Takeaways/Conclusion
More companies across industries use artificial intelligence and machine learning to significantly increase brand awareness, enhance customer engagement, improve user experience, and meet customer expectations.
AI can identify gaps in your content marketing strategy and help you create relevant content for your target audience.
AI can help you generate high-quality leads that will likely buy your products.
With AI, you can personalize and tailor-fit your product recommendations based on your customers’ preferences, increasing repeat purchases.
AI can be integrated into your e-commerce site to reduce shopping cart abandonment.
AI significantly improves website user experience by making it intuitive, accessible, and easy to navigate.
AI-powered social media tools can help you monitor and gain valuable insights about your brand. You can then use this to develop a social media marketing strategy to acquire new customers.
Achieve these milestones, and you’ll be sure to acquire and retain new customers.
Buffalo Unveils Memorial Honoring Victims Of 2022 Supermarket Shooting
Gov. Hochul said at a news conference unveiling the design of the permanent memorial that it represents a rededication to supporting the East Buffalo community.
As the Associated Press reports, Gov. Hochul said at a news conference unveiling the design of the permanent memorial that it represents a rededication to supporting the East Buffalo community. “As we approach the solemn two-year anniversary of when our neighbors were senselessly slaughtered solely because of the color of their skin, we rededicate ourselves in supporting the East Buffalo community, remembering those we lost, and supporting those who were injured.”
Hochul continued, “Today’s unveiling of the final design chosen by the 5/14 Memorial Commission is the culmination of many meetings and conversations with the families of those impacted as well as the community. I thank Mayor Brown, Reverend Blue, and the members of the Commission for their efforts in taking on this heavy task of honoring the lives and legacies of those we lost and the community impacted by this tragedy.”
I can’t believe it’s been two years since the massacre at a grocery store in Buffalo.
Covering the tragedy, it feels like it was last week, the memories are still so fresh. Today, a memorial will be unveiled honoring the ten victims, all of whom were Black. https://t.co/RdTZJLSoTZ
TWO YEARS LATER: We remember those who died in the racist shooting in #Buffalo – and we're getting a look at how they'll be remembered. Here is the final design of the memorial to honor the victims. Another opens today outside of the Tops on Jefferson.https://t.co/czN8ArJfhZ
As residents of Buffalo, New York, commemorate two years since a self-professed white supremacist killed 10 people at a grocery store in a racially motivated mass shooting, the final design for a permanent memorial has been unveiled to honor those killed. https://t.co/kXs6DLqr9upic.twitter.com/iYqvAPc2eZ
Buffalo Mayor Byron Brown also said at the news conference that he takes pride in the work conducted by the 5/14 Memorial Commission.
“The second anniversary of the 5/14 Racially Motivated Mass Shooting is just hours away. It is, and will always be, a somber mark in our city’s history. Our city and region continue to mourn the lives that were taken by an out-of-town white supremacist on that day. I am proud of all the work the 5/14 Memorial Commission has done to create a memorial that reflects the wishes of the families and the community. I also thank the organizations and businesses that have helped us in this process.”
Jin Young Song and Douglass Alligood created the mural’s design, which was selected from 20 submissions to the 5/14 Memorial Commission. New York State has contributed $5 million to the $15 million project, and the city of Buffalo will contribute $1 million. A yearlong campaign is expected to fill in the gaps in funding.
Buffalo artist Valeria Cray and her son, Hiram Cray, a faculty member at the State University of New York Corning Community College, created a sculpture called “Unity for the Honor Space” for the memorial, officially titled “Seeing Us.”
According to Rev. Mark Blue, the chairman of the 5/14 Memorial Commission, the families of the victims were consulted as the design selection went on. “What happened on 5/14 was an act of senseless violence, and it was an act of hate,” Blue told the AP. “It’s my intent to make sure we have a memorial that the families and the communities can be proud of.”
As BLACK ENTERPRISE previously reported, Payton Gendron is currently serving a life sentence with no possibility of parole for his role in the attack after he pleaded guilty to state charges of murder and hate-motivated domestic terrorism. Gendron is also facing separate federal charges and could receive the death penalty if convicted in that case, in which he has entered a plea of not guilty.
Bronny James Medically Cleared By Physicians To Play In NBA
Bronny was examined by three physicians of the NBA's Fitness to Play Panel and was unanimously approved.
Bronny James passed a hurdle in his quest to join his father, LeBron James, in playing in the NBA as the league has medically cleared him after an examination.
According to ESPN, James will be allowed to participate in the upcoming pre-draft combine, a requirement for any college player vying to be drafted into the NBA. The son of future NBA Hall of Famer LeBron James was examined by three physicians on the NBA’s Fitness to Play Panel. All three unanimously approved that it was safe for Bronny to enter the combine, where teams judge the talent and ability of perspective ballplayers.
The pre-draft combine started on Saturday, May 11, and includes players who will participate in 5-on-5 scrimmages.
Bronny will be under scrutiny after having an underwhelming freshman season at the University of Southern California (USC) after he suffered a cardiac arrest on July 24, 2023. He was taken to Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles, where it was revealed that a congenital heart defect was the probable cause for the health scare.
When Bronny returned to the court to play for the USC Trojans, he averaged only 4.8 points, 2.8 rebounds, and 2.1 assists while playing 19.4 minutes per game. Numbers that critics have agreed may mean that he’s not NBA-ready and should possibly stay in college another year to improve his skills and his numbers.
In February, ESPNdropped him from the 2024 mock draft but placed him in the 2025 mock draft.
But, on April 5, he declared for the NBA draft and entered the transfer portal after completing his freshman season. Bronny has a May 29 deadline to stay in the draft or return to college.
Based on an agreement between the NBA and the National Basketball Players Association, anyone who wants to be in the draft must participate in the combine. Yet, the league has given players the option to not play in the scrimmages.
Ex-Marine Joshua Cobb Charged After Online Threats To Kill White People
During an interview with FBI agents, Cobb also confessed to having an affinity for mass shooters, including the white teenager who killed 10 Black people in a racist shooting at a Buffalo, New York, supermarket in May 2022.
Joshua Cobb, a Black New Jersey man and recent Marine, has been charged after he threatened to kill “as many (white people) as I possibly can” in a message he posted online. Federal agents say Cobb acknowledged he wrote the message in addition to making other threatening comments and identifying potential sites for a mass shooting.
As the New York Times reports, during the interview with FBI agents, Cobb confessed to having an affinity for mass shooters, including the white teenager who killed 10 Black people in a racist shooting at a Buffalo, New York, supermarket in May 2022.
Cobb, 23, was charged with one count of transmitting a threat in interstate and foreign commerce and was supposed to make an appearance in Federal District Court on May 13, according to the United States attorney’s office in New Jersey. It is unclear if he appeared in court.
Cobb, who was arrested on May 10, faces up to five years in prison if he is convicted in the case.
“I’m ready to get to the good part of my story where I start taking you mother f*ckers out and killing you all,” one note read. “… My rampage will soon happen…I plan to now continue accumulating the necessary equipment needed to execute. Once all equipment is in, time will then tell. You will all die.”
Another note read, “It’s all a f*cking game, and you all are going to die. I currently lack the means necessary to kill as many as I intend to, but one day, I will have the available resources (finance) to purchase the appropriate weaponry for my killing(s).”
In December 2022, Cobb was alleged to have written the following on an unnamed social media platform: “I want to cause mayhem on the white community.”
“The reason i specifically want to target white people is because as a black male, they will NEVER understand my struggles,” Cobb continued, as detailed in the complaint. “Same way, I will never understand their struggles, but I don’t care to.”
Cobb added: “I want to erase them. All of them, really, but in this case as many as I possibly can.”
Cobb also shared other details in his writings,saying he had already begun planning the attack, had already gotten two of the four guns he planned to use in the attack, and had planned for the attack to happen in New Jersey in 2023 “close to an important holiday to their race.”
In messages Cobb posted to another site, he briefly discussed his hopes of becoming a serial killer, writing at one point, “There is no way out for me. The only way out is bloodshed.”
According to the complaint, Cobb joined the Marines in 2023 and began basic training in South Carolina in June, finished in October, and was set to be transferred to a military base in California.
Before being discharged May 10, which coincided with his arrest, Cobb was interviewed at the base in April. According to the complaint, it was then that Cobb “provided detailed information on three locations he chose as possible targets for his attack,” which included a New Jersey gym, a supermarket in Robbinsville, New Jersey, and a Trenton suburb.
Shannon Sharpe Is ‘Ready To Move On’ After Beef With Shaquille O’Neal
'I don't have no problem with Shaq. He said what he said, I'm ready to move on,' Sharpe said.
After Inside the NBA host Shaquille O’Neal released a scathing diss track attacking Club Shay Shay host Shannon Sharpe, the beef may be a short one, as Sharpe stated he is “ready to move on.”
According to People, the two Hall of Famers engaged in a back-and-forth that led to Shaq releasing the lyrics directed at Sharpe on his Instagram account. As Sharpe was approached on the red carpet at the Webby Awards on May 13 about the friction between the two, he stated that he has no problems with the TNT commentator.
He was questioned on if he was going to respond to Shaq’s latest jab and he responded by saying he wouldn’t.
“I mean, I don’t have no problem with Shaq,” he told People. “He said what he said, I’m ready to move on.”
The beef started when Shaq told NBA MVP winner, Denver Nuggets center Nikola Jokic that he didn’t deserve the award and that Oklahoma Thunder star point guard Shai Gilgeous-Alexander was more deserving. Sharpe stated that O’Neal was jealous because he only earned one MVP award, compared to Jokic getting his third one.
Shaq initially responded by dissing Sharpe on his Instagram account, “If you ain’t ranked in the top ten in your profession, then you can’t speak on me. Don’t forget I know what you did to get where you at. Me, jealous lol sounds like you jealous. I know you tryna stay relevant by gossiping on your podcast.”
But the NBA Hall of Famer didn’t stop there as he continued the beef by writing some rap lyrics dissing the NFL Hall of Famer and posted it immediately before Sharpe could even reply. Shaq commented on the post telling friends, who may be mutual acquaintances of both Hall of Famers, that he will not entertain having a sit-down with Sharpe.
Q-Tip, Ledisi, And Gilberto Santa Rosa Receive Honorary Doctorates From Berklee College Of Music
Q-Tip shares his gratitude for honorary doctorate from Berklee College of Music.
Q-Tip is “still pinching” himself after receiving an honorary doctorate from the Berklee College of Music over Mother’s Day weekend.
The Grammy Award-winning rapper and producer was at the Agganis Arena in Boston on Saturday, May 11, for Berklee College of Music’s 2024 commencement ceremony. He was among the three honorary doctorate recipients who were presented degrees by Berklee Interim Executive Vice President Betsy Newman.
The founding member of A Tribe Called Quest was celebrated for his pivotal role in early hip-hop culture and “forward-thinking artistic vision, which merges rap, jazz, and other styles with socially conscious lyrics, as well as for his impact as a producer, actor, educator, and cultural ambassador,” the school stated.
“To choose this path [of the artist] is a courageous choice indeed,” Q-Tip said during his acceptance speech. “You are handed the task to be courageous in your personal lives, to find balance between intellect and instinct . . . to not let bad choices define you, but to refine you.”
The “Can I Kick It?” emcee reminded the graduates to celebrate their personal accomplishments as “precious mantras . . . to remind you that you are worthy, and that you can do it. You got this!”
In a photo shared on Instagram, Q-Tip further expressed his gratitude for the honorary doctorate he received alongside Grammy-winning R&B singer and songwriter Ledisi and Grammy- and Latin Grammy-winning bandleader and sonero Gilberto Santa Rosa.
“Thank you again to the folks at Berklee for the honor bestowed [prayer hand emojis],” he wrote. “What a great time to share [with] dear friend @ledisi and new friend @santarosalive and CONGRATS to the class of 2024!! Im still pinching [pinching emoji] #berkleecollegeofmusic.”
Q-Tip receives honorary doctorate at Berklee College of Music: "Still pinching [myself]" pic.twitter.com/iGBex1BmK7
During the commencement, a lineup of Berklee’s most gifted vocalists, instrumentalists, arrangers, track producers, dancers, and visual artists came together to honor the recipients by performing a medley of their greatest hits, including Ledisi’s “Pieces of Me,” Q-Tip’s “Vivrant Thing,” and Santa Rosa’s “Perdóname.” Ledisi also hit the stage to perform a special rendition of the gospel song “Take My Hand, Precious Lord,” and Santa Rosa joined students on stage for a performance of “Que Alguien Me Diga.”
During Ledisi’s acceptance speech, the artist in residence at the Berklee Institute of Jazz and Gender Justice since 2022 shared how, throughout her career, she’d been told: “that I wasn’t pretty enough, you’ll never make it, and I’m still here.” She put that pain into writing a song that garnered her first Grammy nomination.
“Never let the world tell you who you are. You tell them who you are, she said.
Postal Worker Sentenced To 2 Years Probation After Pleading Guilty To Stealing Mail
Marlene Cruz was convicted of theft of mail matter by officer or employee after opening envelopes and packages between January 2022 and November 2023.
A Rochester, New York, woman has been sentenced to two years probation after she was convicted of stealing items from mail that she was supposed to be delivering on her route as a mail carrier.
The U.S. Attorney’s Office, Western District of New York announced that 40-year-old Marlene Cruz was convicted of theft of mail matter by officer or employee, and was sentenced to serve two years probation by U.S. District Judge Charles J. Siragusa. She avoided jail time although she faced a maximum penalty of five years in prison and a $250,000 fine after she pleaded guilty in January.
According to Assistant U.S. Attorney Kyle P. Rossi, the U.S. Postal Service (USPS) received complaints from local residents in January 2022 regarding their mail being tampered with in late 2021. After some investigation, officials determined that Cruz was the carrier on the route of the various complainants. Upon further investigation, it was determined that Cruz regularly opened envelopes and packages between January 2022 and November 2023. When doing so, she took items like “ticket stubs, documents, cash, lottery tickets, and gift cards, on dozens of occasions.”
After discovering her misdeeds, investigators conducted mail integrity tests by placing cash and gift cards within greeting cards in the mail to be delivered by Cruz in May and November 2023. After her shift ended on Nov. 2, 2023, investigators brought Cruz in and executed a warrant for her and her personal belongings. They found a gift card planted in one of the mail integrity test greeting cards inside her duffle bag.
The Miami Herald reported that Cruz was seen going through 90 pieces of mail on 38 separate occasions, according to affidavits. Prosecutors said that she opened envelopes, tore them up, and either threw them out of her vehicle or resealed and delivered them.
Cruz pleaded guilty to theft of mail matter by officer or employee, before Siragusa in January.
The talk show icon was assigned a guardian by the court to make the decision to sell her property after she was deemed "incapacitated."
Wendy Williams’ beloved Manhattan penthouse has reportedly been sold by her court-appointed guardian, marking the end of the former talk show host’s ownership of the Financial District property.
According to the New York Post, the transaction was completed May 10. Records stated that the 59-year-old was deemed “incapacitated” and was in need of a guardian to make the decision to offer up the residence.
“Wendy’s dream has always been to live in Manhattan in a dream apartment but never got a chance to do so,” an insider revealed, lamenting the “very unfortunate situation.”
The three-bedroom, three-bathroom penthouse was sold for $3.75 million, a significant $822,000 decrease from its 2021 purchase. Before the sale, Williams bid farewell to the personal effects that once adorned the space, including her iconic purple chair used during her “Hot Topics” segment that garnered massive viewership.
The 59-year-old TV personality’s medical team delivered a sobering diagnosis in 2023, revealing she was grappling with primary progressive aphasia and frontotemporal dementia (FTD). Compounding her health woes, reports surfaced earlier this year that Williams was slapped with a hefty tax lien on her New York City condo, owing a staggering $568,451.57 in back taxes spanning 2019 to 2021.
Fans were afforded a candid glimpse into Williams’ personal tribulations during a Lifetime documentary series, Where is Wendy?, where she revealed her financial straits and confessed she has “no money” left.
Daily Beast noted in February that the talk show titan, whose show was cancelled in 2021, shared concerns about her team possibly taking advantage of the financial guardianship appointed by the court.
Lifetime released two other projects documenting Williams’ life, Wendy Williams: The Movie and Wendy Williams: What a Mess. Williams hosted her popular talk show from 2008 to 2021, when it was taken over by guest hosts until its 2022 cancellation.
California DA Suing Major Insurance Companies For ‘Lowballing’ Owners Of Totaled Cars
Time for everyone to look at their policies...
A California District Attorney is suing major car insurance companies, including Progressive and the United Services Automobile Association (USAA), for allegedly working together to undervalue “totaled” vehicles.
In a lawsuit announced on May 9, Alameda County District Attorney Pamela Price accused the insurance giants and their affiliated software developers of using valuation software to systematically undervalue “totaled” vehicles and pay car owners less than the actual value owed according to their policies.
Price claims the process violates several state laws and is pressing for civil penalties, restitution for California drivers, injunctive relief, and corresponding fees and costs. “Many residents live paycheck to paycheck and go deeply into debt just to buy a car,” Price said. “When an insurance company underpays its customers for a totaled vehicle…that can lead to job losses and even homelessness.”
The lengthy complaint, filed on April 26, alleges car insurance companies like the Progressive Corporation, USAA and affiliates owe “duties of good faith and fair dealing to hundreds of thousands of California residents and businesses each year.”
According to Patch, the suit points the finger at software developers who worked with the insurance companies to manipulate and lower the “actual cash value” of totaled vehicles. The scheme allowed customers to make “lowball” settlement offers. Then, the DA’s office alleges, the companies would resell the vehicle at auction in order to minimize the losses after the policyholder agreed to the low offer.
The DA office feels the alleged scheme affects all California drivers but specifically targeted senior citizens and veterans. Business owners are also impacted, including car manufacturers and dealers, since insurance companies were “systematically lowering the market value of their vehicles;” gap insurance providers, whose “gap insurance” policies are required to make up the difference between outstanding loan amounts and the undervalued amount paid; and car loan entities, when suffering car owners are no longer able to pay on car loans.
“We are seeking to level the playing field for vehicle owners who face what looks like a rigged game when their car or truck is totaled because a loss of a vehicle can destabilize a person’s life.”
Price’s office is seeking anyone who believes they are a victim of an insurer undervaluing their vehicle, and are looking for them to complete a consumer fraud complaint form.
