Automatic Renewal of Advertising Contract
Complaint
Michael from St. Louis
Country: United States
I have a business and have advertised in the Yellow Pages for decades. A couple years ago I decided to stop advertising in the Yellow Pages. For the past year I'm absolutely sure that I did not agree to any advertising.
Today I got a bill for $1,140 ($95 per month). I called and told 'Brian' that I did not agree to any advertising. He told me that when the monthly charge is less than $100, no sales representative will call. THE CONTRACT RENEWS ITSELF AUTOMATICALLY. It becomes the advertiser's responsibility to send a registered letter to a certain address in order to cancel the advertising. As a courtesy, Brian offered to cut the bill in half ($47.50 per month). He warned me this was a one-time offer.
What should I do?
Today I got a bill for $1,140 ($95 per month). I called and told 'Brian' that I did not agree to any advertising. He told me that when the monthly charge is less than $100, no sales representative will call. THE CONTRACT RENEWS ITSELF AUTOMATICALLY. It becomes the advertiser's responsibility to send a registered letter to a certain address in order to cancel the advertising. As a courtesy, Brian offered to cut the bill in half ($47.50 per month). He warned me this was a one-time offer.
What should I do?
Comments
1) It would be surprising if ATT would bill after a year, rather than in advance for the following year, as that is not generally how Yellow Pages advertizing is done. Allegedly, they have, not "$100 per month" at risk, but the full, now disputed "$1140", which isn't even good business. The salesman's claim that they don't call to confirm a firm order, over "less than $100", is just too conveniently fitted to the alleged circumstances. Even you were surprised at this, and yet this "salesman" had a ready made answer to deal with your suspicion, which itself is suspicious.
2) What some salesman tells you has nothing to do with any binding contract. It is no substitute for whatever you may or may not have agreed to in writing, and ATT is savvy enough to know about written contracts. His verbal statements do nothing to verify you actually agreed to anything. Instead, they try to talk around such verification, which is suspicious if there is actually some "contract". In fact, they might be telling you what they want you to believe, either to make a "sale", or as a "con".
3) His "warning" that this is a "one time offer" is also suspicious, as it aims at a goal of steering you toward payment without proof you even owe anything. It may be an indicator that this "salesman" is really not even with ATT, but with some fake business directory running a common fraudulent billing fraud, These scams are not only known to pretend to be "ATT", pretending you are "renewing an existing contract", but practically always call AFTER allegedly a year of "advertizing" has already passed.
4) He might be with some third party marketer selling ATT advertizing, using a fraudulent pitch that you already "agreed" to it to close the "sale" and earn his commission or bonus through fraud.
At this point you don't really know WHO this caller is, regardless of what he claims, and ANY call demanding money without an invoice identifying what it is for, is suspicious on its face. Fraudulent billing scams often use existing legitimate online directory listings, calling to either claim you "agreed" to their own listing of your business, or even calling to claim to represent a directory you did list with.
The above factors point to possible deception and fraud, either by this "ATT salesman", or by someone pretending to be "ATT".
To verify what the terms of any actual contract you may have with ATT are, check your own copy of the contract, AND ask him to send you a copy of the contract and an invoice for the alleged amount due for your review. See if it even matches your own records. For example, it's initial date would match your own payment records, and the ATT address and phone contact information would be verifiable.
If he refuses, or claims he can't send it but still insists on immediate payment "to accept this one time offer", that is an indication you are dealing with a fraudulent imposter. He may not want to send anything in writing through the mail for fear of mail fraud charges. Or he might send something with very poor readability, or insist on faxing it.
He might instead threaten you with "sending this to collection", or damaging your credit. You might even receive a fraudulent bill from a collection agency, as there are some who work with these scams, playing this game of bluff.
You could also call ATT directly and check, as there is no downside to checking with them, befoe you part with money you may not even owe.
All attempts to evade verifying what is supposedly a "legitimate contract or agreement" are indicators of possible fraud common with business directory scams.
What phone numbers is he calling from, he has provided as a callback number, or what phone number shows on caller id?
The fraudulent business directory schemes use intimidation to coerce payment for unordered "services".
Intimidation doesn't work well with large corporations where the accounts payable clerk must get approval from someone who made a purchase requisition to order or agree to order something, a supervisor, or maybe an accountant or controller for any payment, as a matter of policy. All payments typically take at least two approvals.
That is why they primarily target small businesses, charities, schools, and churches, with looser controls, where intimidation is more effective. They try to threaten some inexperienced clerk into paying in a panic, for fear of getting in trouble for "dropping the advertizing", or the owner into paying based on the (false) claim that some employee "agreed".
When you find yourself subjected to a pitch based on intimidation, that itself is an indicator of fraud.
Nice job these guys are bottom feeders! Who uses a phone book anymore!
Please call us at 310 - 550 - 4840 and ask for Tabitha. You may also email us at YPAutoRenewalVictim@gmail.com (YPAutoRenewalVictim at gmail . com )