Consumer protection refers to the laws designed to aid retail consumers of goods and services that have been improperly manufactured, delivered, performed, handled, or described. Such laws provide the retail consumer with additional protections and remedies not generally provided to merchants and others who engage in business transactions, on the premise that the consumers do not enjoy a sufficient bargaining position with respect to the businessmen with whom they deal and therefore should not be strictly limited by the legal rules that govern recovery for damages among businessmen. The overarching goal is to protect individuals and the interest of the public in general from unfair and misleading activity in business and commerce (such as false advertising and deceptive trade practices) and scams perpetrated by criminals (such as identity theft and pyramid schemes) that harm a substantial number of consumers.
Alpharetta is a city in north Fulton County, Georgia, United States. It is one of the most affluent communities in the state. According to a 2008 estimate, Alpharetta's population is 49,903. Selected for its location next to a spring, Alpharetta began as a campground, originally known as New Prospect Camp Ground until late 1858. Officially chartered on December 11 of that year, Alpharetta (supposedly Greek for "first town") served as the county seat of Milton County until the end of 1931 when Milton was merged with Fulton County to avoid bankruptcy during the Great Depression. Despite Alpharetta's poor start, and it being one of the more distal, large suburbs in metro Atlanta, Alpharetta now features several mid-rise buildings, which are home to many high-tech companies including Hewlett-Packard, UPS Supply Chain Solutions, RedPrairie, Radiant Systems, Infor, Lucent, Nortel, IBM, Sun Microsystems, AT&T, Siemens, McKesson Corporation, Verizon, Verizon Wireless, Alltel, E-Trade, Hansgrohe, General Electric, and LexisNexis. In 2009, Forbes ranked Alpharetta as the number 1 "reloville" in the United States.