HAS ANYONE SUCCESSFULLY GOTTEN THEIR MONEY BACK?
Complaint
j r dyar
Country: United States
I am just curious if anyone has been able to get all their money back? If so how did you do it. It would be a great help to all if you could post it here. I am wondering how the city of Las Vegas lets these creeps get away with it. I know it's buyer beware, but when they say a charge of 1.95 and then it shows up in your account as 149.80, shouldn't this be considerd some sort of fraud? I think if enough people started calling and writing to their local fraud units, maybe something would happen.
Comments
Certain parts of the country have reputations for certain types of scams, and Las Vegas is one of them. South Florida is another, for other types of scams. Newport Beach/Costa Mesa CA, had a bunch of "boiler room operations during the dot com bubble.
See, for example: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oscar_Goodman
Federal law gives you the right to push fraudulent charges back thru your bank, who can then push them back to the bank where the scammer has their account. If that bank can't get the money out of their customer's account, they get stuck. That is how the system works, and it depends on YOU submitting a timely written dispute of any fraudulent charges with your bank, to invoke federal law under Regulation E.
Your bank may try to direct you to getting the "merchant" to refund you, and this "merchant" may even say you have to submit some claim or request, but what they are probably trying to do is stretch out your dispute past 60 days, leaving you with no effective way to use Federal law to get your money back. If you are not dealing with a legitimate business, you can't depend on the business to give refunds in good faith.
DO NOT ACCEPT THIS! FILE A WRITTEN COMPLAINT WITH YOUR BANK, AND EVEN IF YOU HAND DELIVER IT, ALSO SEND IT BY CERTIFIED RETURN RECEIPT REQUESTED, so you have PROOF they got it in time. Your bank is required to follow banking rules, including the rules for disputes of errors and fraudulent charges or ACH debits, and so is the "merchant's" bank. If they don't follow the law, they are still on the hook for the charge, and you start sending complaints about YOUR BANK to the appropriate federal regulatory agency (probably OCC) so they can determine in their next audit if this bank has other problems with properly handling disputes. Your bank will not want this.
Scammers already know that once you pass the 60 day Federal dispute window, they are practically home free, since it would cost you more to sue them than it is worth, and even if you won, it would again cost you more than it is worth to get them to pay you anything back.
You might also file a local police report for fraud, and include a copy of it with your bank dispute (or send it later, with a notarized fraud affidavit), although this is NOT necessary to preserve you rights, and DO NOT DELAY filing your bank dispute, since if you miss the 60 day deadline, they don't have to take your dispute.
You might include with your dispute copies of the many complaints for United Services on www.complaintsboard.com, which show fraudulent charges very similar to yours. www.ripoffreport.com contains a consumer complaint with an alleged response from the company trying to appear legitimate, but none of the company's claimed "offers" match any of the consumer complaints.
https://complaintwire.org/Complaint.aspx/OAjh ... fHABthgjLStZ5nQ