FRAUDULENT BILL AND UNAUTHROIZED AD FROM GO YELLOW PAGES
Complaint
Leah Boyd
Country: United States
On March 10, 2010 I received a collection bill from A.C.A. Recovery in Ridgewood, NJ for $574.00 from goyellowpagesonline.com based out of North Miami Beach, FL. I called A.C.A. and spoke with Mr. Born and conveyed to him that I have never heard of this company nor have I ever ordered any online service from this company. He did not have a contract but said he had an invoice. I asked him to fax it to me and I received a very blurry fax that did not have my name or my company name anywhere on it. I began to research go yellow pages online and all I found was one complaint after the next from companies who had the identical amount of $574.00 charged to them on a collection notice sent from A.C.A Recovery. I spoke to Mr. Born again and he told me he would put my claim into dispute and go yellow pages would have to deal with it directly. This is nothing but a scam!!! I am going to report this to the BBB, the NJ Attorney General and the Florida Attorney General. I am also going to send go yellow pages a letter stating that I want a refraction of the bill with a zero balance sent to me. Beware of this company!
Comments
Follow up with a written dispute of the invoice as fraudulent, mailed certified to ACA Recovery.
Since the invoice is fraudulent, proceed with the fraud complaints as you have already indicated. Include complaints to FTC, and your own state Attorney General. You can also file internet-related fraud complaints at www.ic3.gov
In addition, file a mail fraud complaint against ACA Recovery with the U.S. Postal Inspector. It is illegal to use the U.S. Mail in a fraudulent scheme, and ACA Recovery has been receiving fraud disputes for so many months they clearly know these "invoices" are fraudulent.
DO NOT PAY FOR ANY OF THESE, THEY ARE ALL SCAMS!
As the telemarketing age continues to grow, more and more businesses use this approach to successfully sell or advertise their products and/or services.
Not so many of them ARE legitimate however, this way of selling is not only used today by companies and charities, but used by people eager to commit fraud. They depend on a person's naiveness and rob them blind using their best telephone sales tactics as their weapon.
Now lets take a look at the common definition of telemarketing fraud.
According to some experts, the term telemarketing fraud refers generally to any scheme to defraud. In a telemarketing fraud scheme, the persons or person carrying out the scheme use the telephone as their primary means of communicating to their prospective targets. They tend work with their sales tactics to persuade people to send money for the "sale". Usually these fraudulent companies solicit people to buy their products and/or services, or to donate funds for charitable causes, or even to invest money. Most of these operations use representations and promises just to trap their unfortunate victims.
There is one particular telemarketing tactic commonly used called the "reloading". Reloading is a term that refers to the re-contacting of victims after their initial transactions were completed. They re-contact the victim for additional payments.
You can find out more information on our website: www.spgconsultants.com
By informing each other, we protect each other.
Sincerely,
SPG Consultants
I'm sure by the time I call the BBB and contact the Attorney General this business will be closed & already opened under a new name & tax ID. Why these companies and scammers cannot be prosecuted is beyond me. Legitimate businesses should NOT have to waste their time arguing about a scam.
I am hoping to hear back from ACA Recovery as I refuse to send them our dispute in writing - they would then have one of our signatures to play with and who knows what they will do with that!
Thanks for putting the message out there that this is just a SCAM.
I went to the police the same day and submitted a witness statement. For good measure, I also put in a complaint with the BBB.
The company called me again the next day - same speal. I told them they were either running a scam or someone put my info in there. I told her I already went to the police. The woman didn't deny either. She said she would put my account in review and get back with me.
I haven't heard from them since and it's been over a week.
Really - if you look at the recent submissions - they are all from the same state. Looks suspicious right there.
Periodically, they sweep up the garbage.
However, there are reports from other business owners who filed complaints with FTC that FTC has been building up a complaint file on them.
FTC sued one of the scam "business directory" telemarketers that ACA Recovery collects for, Regional Yellow Pages Online AKA Thompson Hill Publishing (and a bunch of other names) in federal court, and they got a permanent injunction against them earlier this year.
I received a call from a yellow pages representative that advised we had signed up for a Yellow Page online listing two years prior. She claimed that the first year was free, but we were being billed for the second year. The third year was about to start and she wanted to confirm if we would like to continue the online ad service or cancel. I told her that no one in our company authorized the online ad, but she insisted that someone did and that she had no control of our quality control department. She refused to do a cancellation over the phone and said that the only way to cancel the service was to authorize her to send the final billing and decline the additional year of service. If I did this, a cancellation number would be provided. She assured me that if no one did authorize the service, I would be able to do dispute the bill and not pay it, but this would only happen if authorized her to send the final bill. If I did not authorize her to send the final bill, I would be billed for the third year of the online ad and she would be unable to stop billing for the third year.
This sounded completely illogical and I asked to speak to her supervisor. He repeated the same story and advised that the bill was $599. At that point I conducted a Yellow Page scam search using the $599 figure and discovered that this was indeed a scam! I abruptly hung up to read what the rest of the posters in this forum had to say.