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.
Bethpage is a hamlet (and also the name of a census-designated place with slightly different borders) located within the Town of Oyster Bay in Nassau County, New York, United States. The CDP's population was 16,543 at the 2000 United States Census. The hamlet is served by its own school district, the boundaries of which include parts of some surrounding hamlets including Old Bethpage and Plainedge. The ZIP code for most of the hamlet is 11714 except for the most northeastern portion which lies in the Old Bethpage postal district of 11804. The town of Hempstead, on its website, includes a small part of Bethpage hamlet that is in the Levittown census-designated place.