Lied to me and threatened to ruin my credit!
Complaint
Samantha
Country: United States
Dealer Services called me. The man said that I had signed up for a warranty on my used car through the used car dealership I bought it from. He said that my free coverage was up and that I owed 2,400 dollars. He said that the cancellation fee was 2,400 dollars as well so I was basically screwed. The papers, he said, had been signed at the used car dealership. He led me to believe that the dealership conned me into signing papers, but I was responsible for the amount anyway. I had minutes to fork over a $700 deposit or the company would ruin my credit. I became hysterical and started crying. He then said he could lower the amount to $400. Stupidly, I gave my debit card number to spare my credit score (my husband and I are trying to buy a house).
As I waited for the varification call, I told my husband what was happening. He called the used car dealership and found the papers for the car. We had never signed a thing about a warranty. The people from the dealership said we were being scammed. We immediately called our bank and cancelled our debit card. When a new representitive called back to verify our payment to Dealer Services, we told her we knew exactly what was going on. She hatefully exclaimed, "I don't appreciate you calling our company a scam!" Anyway, she said that I had never signed anything and that the other guy I had spoken with said that I had just wanted to take advantage of their "wonderful offer." Anyway, I was under no obligation so they cancelled my payment.
These people are using immoral sales tactics and I am going to report them to every agency I can. I am a college educated woman and I fell for this! I feel so stupid, not to mention violated and ashamed.
As I waited for the varification call, I told my husband what was happening. He called the used car dealership and found the papers for the car. We had never signed a thing about a warranty. The people from the dealership said we were being scammed. We immediately called our bank and cancelled our debit card. When a new representitive called back to verify our payment to Dealer Services, we told her we knew exactly what was going on. She hatefully exclaimed, "I don't appreciate you calling our company a scam!" Anyway, she said that I had never signed anything and that the other guy I had spoken with said that I had just wanted to take advantage of their "wonderful offer." Anyway, I was under no obligation so they cancelled my payment.
These people are using immoral sales tactics and I am going to report them to every agency I can. I am a college educated woman and I fell for this! I feel so stupid, not to mention violated and ashamed.
Comments
Nice con to "blame" it on your dealer, yet still try to stick you with it. To work, that depends on creating panic, so you don't have time to check it out. He basically "admits" he knows "someone else" is scamming you but is supposedly going to attempt to enforce what he knows is a fraudulent "contract".
There is no basis in law or logic, just psychology. He is a predator looking for unsophisticated people, possibly worried about their credit, where he can play on this fear to squeeze a few thousand dollars from them. You are dealing with someone who has done this before many times, has mastered his "art", and knows exactly what he can get away with.
"Auto warranty" scammers often play on fear and panic, claiming your warranty is about to expire, that they are affiliated with the manufacturer or dealer, or other deceptive claims in order to get a multi-thousand dollar payment for a "policy" of questionable (and often even undisclosed) "coverage".
They generally call or contact people with no knowledge of whether they even own a car, fishing for any excuse to sound "legitimate" to complete the scam. You may have tipped them off in some way that you had recently purchased a car, so they ran with that, weaving it into the scam.
Trying to take you for $2400, dropping it to $700, then $400, is also a clue that you are dealing with a con. He will take whatever he can, with whatever excuse works. In fact, it sounds much like you are dealing with "advance fee" loan scammers, who often engage in other scams as well.
You did exactly the right thing by immediately contacting your bank to cancel your card. When dealing with scammers, ignore the threats or promises, just block the money. You should, however, keep an eye on your statements, to make sure that their charges don't show up anyway. Depending on how charges are run through (autopay, for example), they can roll over to replacement cards for a few months, even when charged against a blocked card. You can contact your bank to get them reversed.
In the future DO NOT HAVE OR USE DEBIT CARDS. The banks are heavily promoting them, claiming "fraud protection", or whatever, but they really like them because they still collect the merchant fees without fronting the money since it comes straight from your account. They are a greater risk than credit cards, however, due to the fact that they take money directly from your account, and cause more problems with payments to other creditors should you have to block or close the account due to fraud.
Since this is attempted extortion, report it. Contact your local police, your DA, your state AG, and FTC. Include any information you might have, such as phone numbers from caller id or fax, phone number they may have provided to call them back, etc.
Contact your bank to see if they attempt to run any charge through, as there may be information associated with the charge to indicate under what name and through what payment processor they are getting access to the EFT and ACH systems.
I have, however, seen such reports in connection with telemarketing scammers involved in "debt reduction" scams, "advance fee loan" scams, "magazine subscription" scams, and phony "debt collection" associated with old payday loan data. These groups often use false claims of an "agreement" or "verbal contract" where none exists or they have no intention of meeting their side of any "contract", or to overcome last minute cold feet by consumers starting to realize they may be falling for a scam.
One common pattern is to play "bad cop", or possibly transfer the call to a "closer" in "legal" (the next desk) who may use threats to secure the payment quickly before the suseptible consumer gets warned by family, friends, or law enforcement. Such thugs are often very experienced in knowing how to play the game, when to keep pushing or just hang up, and are basically sociopathic professional con men who may have been doing this in multiple operations with multiple scams for years.
In fact, the amounts involved ($2400, then $700, then $400) although common with "auto warranty" scammers, are also common with "advance fee loan" scammers who not only "double up" the con when the get one payment, but may back off the amount to "close the deal". All of these scams depend on getting whatever they can out of you up front, figuring it is either now or never.
This contrasts with the run-of-the-mill "free-trial negative-option autoshipment" scams, which typically involve much smaller amounts designed to not be worth the trouble of doing anything about. The latter are built on creating at least a pretense of an agreement, to be used later as a defense since their location is traceable, so that they can later claim there must have been some "mistake" but they can only refund your last payment as a "compromise".
The large money scams depend more on just getting your money and being unfindable. Any lie is ok if it works, and the claims of affiliation with your dealer, having a binding "contract", that you were conned but by the dealer so there is nothing you can do, etc, all fit the pattern that they won't be anywhere in sight or traceable once you find you have been conned. The amounts, up to a couple thousand, are still not enough to get state or national law enforcement interested, since they normally don't take interest until several hundred thousand is stolen, and this type of scammer often scatters their activities over consumers in multiple states, under different names and phone numbers to not appear too large a target. They may also be Canadian-based (particularly the Montreal area), to add the complications of cross-border prosecution in the way of law enforcement.
Often this sort of scammer uses Western Union to forward payments, making it both hard to trace and reverse (Western Union payments can be picked up anywhere there is a Western Union agent), but since they took your debit card number, either they may have a connection with some payment processor willing to look the other way, a merchant willing to launder the charges under their name, or this is a rogue con man who mastered his craft in the above cons now working telemarketing in the "softer" cons of the "auto warranty industry".
The other possibility is that this was a phishing scam, but then they would probably not have bothered to "confirm your payment", and not have attempted to get your debit card number by threats which might raise your suspicions and lead you to block the number, since there are more deceptive ways that work with many people. They would have either just run up charges against it or moved on.
To disect what just happened, think back over your call, and look at how the caller may have first led you to believe he was "legitimate", and how he may then have used your responses that might have revealed or just hinted that you had just purchased a car, were concerned about your credit, etc, to borrow the "legitimacy" of the car dealer to substantiate his claim (common con technique), and to taylor his attack to your weaknesses.
This place is a scam. It's a telemarketing business. All they want is your money. It's not a legit "business". They hire openers which they are well trained to read off a script trick you into giving them your info and transfer it on to the closer. The closers are crooks that also are trained to read off a script word per word. That scrip has the answers to any question you have therefore they can trick you into buying a "warranty" which is a scam! If you receive a call from these Ppl "dealer services" simply hang up on them. They are out there to steal your money. I did my research after I was fooled into buying they're so cal "warranty".
Michael Shaftel is the owner.
They are a telemarketing phone bank that lies to people they call pretending to work for the car company. This implies that they have an existing relationship with you -- required to get around the "Do Not Call" list rules.
They use things like having your VIN number on hand to trick you into thinking they really are the dealer. They have even claimed to be sitting in a specific dealership at a particular address when they call. I have later verified that this was impossible when I called the dealer.
They lie...lie...lie.
One thing that is true, which they will tell you when they finally admit that they are Dealer Services Corp. is that the company is Better Business Bureau approved. Sure. Because Michael Shaftel managed to get himself onto the board of the BBB in New Jersey and made up some lame excuse about how the complaints about Dealer Services were for some OTHER company. Lie...lie...lie.
Never ever do business with an extended warranty company over the phone.
It is a rip off. A con. And criminal.
they said there was no warrenty left they told me i should buy so i bought a 2 year 40.000 warrenty i bought my car on june23 2010 and i brought my car in to gm for a oil change and thet told me i still have a warrenty till 2012 i live in quebec its been 2 months since i owned the car why do i need 2 warrentys anyway you think i can get my warrenty money back from a third party used car dealer who wasnt honest with me and told me there was no warrenty on the car gm still has the warrenty till 2012 or 160.000 klms what can i do