COEUR d'ALENE - According to the Better Business Bureau, an erosion of trust plagues consumers and business communities nationwide.

"Complaints have risen for five straight years," said Jan Quintrall, chief executive officer and president of the BBB for Eastern Washington, North Idaho and Montana.

Quintrall said the BBB received more than one million consumer complaints last year, and that the numbers are continuing to increase. She attributed this, in part, to the current economic climate.

Quintrall said that economic pressure and poor profits cause businesses to engage in dishonest practices, add hidden fees and charges and cut back on services, all at the expense of the consumer.

"Trust is everything," Quintrall said, adding that the most trusted businesses have a well-known reputation for honesty, fairness, dependability and reliability.

Zan Deery, lead investigator with the regional BBB office, offered several suggestions to aid consumers in avoiding potentially dishonest business practices.

"Do your due diligence and research and include the BBB in that research prior to making any agreement or signing any contract," Deery said. "It's when people don't know what to look for that they can fall into problems."

Deery placed extra emphasis on watching out for high-pressure door-to-door salesmen and online scams.

"Do not succumb to the high pressure tactics of door-to-door salesmen," Deery said. "Any legitimate business/organization is going to let you make that decision tomorrow and will be glad to answer your questions.

"Many people are taking, on sight, online information. They're taking a risk if they are not doing their research."

Deery explained that businesses are also increasingly being defrauded, and offered several examples. The top cases involve scammers offering businesses grants for an upfront fee, hijacking business profiles online, lifting a company's phone number and spoofing the Caller ID to make their calls seem more legitimate and using legitimate business addresses on fraudulent checks to purport sweepstakes and job scams.

Sometimes online scammers can be very convincing, so a little checking can save a big hit in the checkbook.

Angie Gunter of Cataldo was advertising Labrador pups in The Press and got two relay phone calls, used for callers with hearing impairment, from people posing as buyers. Several e-mail exchanges, with the sender using poor English, raised her suspicions, and when a postal money order arrived with the instructions to pay for the animal and wire $100 directly to a shipper, she did some investigating.

"I Googled the address of the shipper, and it was just an empty lot in an industrial park," she said.