unauthorized charges
Complaint
Mary Bearss
Country: United States
I have been working on this problem since Dec of 2009. I have submitted 3 online requests for a refund. I have been working with my credit union. I have sent complaint letters to the Illinois State Atty General, the Consumer Fraud Bureau, Consumer Affairs.com and anyone else I can come across. I have called several bogus phone numbers... Please, feel free to contact me for any additional information or more specifics.
Comments
In mid-November 2009, their rate of complaints began to rise drastically, reaching 16X the prior base rate on ripoffreport.com. Complaints of cramming continued through the Christmas season, now including complaints that they were "reactivating" charging accounts of consumers who had already cancelled in some cases more than a year ago. This continued through December 2009, after which their phone lines and web-sites started to be no longer functional.
The Illinois Attorney General sued the company and its president, Brian Dale, for consumer fraud and cramming in early 2010. At that point their order and customer service lines went dead and their websites began displaying only a message that they were no longer taking orders, with some voice-mail number and email address to request refunds.
http://www.illinoisattorneygeneral.gov/pressroom/2010_02/20100217b.html
As in most cases of fraudulent charges, your most direct path to getting a refund is to file a timely fraud dispute through your bank. Your bank should have assisted you in doing this and in blocking additional fraudulent charges once you notified them. They can and should have investigated and reversed any fraudulent charges if you reported them within 60 days of the statement date of the statement showing the disputed charges, under FRB Reg. E for disputed EFT charges to checking accounts, and under FCBA for disputed credit card charges.
Those disputes should have been in writing, and in such cases you would be wise to dispute via mail sent certified for proof, but for checking accounts, be aware that FRB Reg. E allows for "constructive notice" to your bank to set the date for determining a timely dispute.
That means that the notice is considered timely if your bank was notified in any way that they should have been aware the charges were fraudulent, via phone, mail, email, walking in and talking to bank personel, or even if you mailed them notice, and they either lost it, failed to act on it, failed to read it, failed to even realized it was a dirpute, or the mail truck got washed away by Hurricane Katrina. The deciding factor for fraud disputes under FRB Reg. E is that you took the step that would have reasonably given them notice.
If you did notify them timely, they can reverse the charges, even if the company is bankrupt, by pushing them back onto the fraudulent company's own bank.
If they fail to do so, and your dispute was timely, your bank may be liable to you for the loss under the provisions of FRB Reg. E or FCBA. In that case, if you have problems getting a refund, first dispute through the agency responsible for regulating your financial institution. For nationally chartered banks, that would be the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, which you can reach at www.occ.gov. For credit unions, I am not sure, but nationally chartered credit unions are subject to federal regulation.
If your dispute was timely, and within the 60 day window, and you decide to sue your bank under those provisions, be aware that there is a 1 year SOL.
Note that all these provisions only apply to consumer accounts. Business accounts generally have far less protection from fraud.
That is why you should ALWAYS dispute all unauthorized or fraudulent charges immediately through your bank, and close and block the account, instead of depending on the good will of a company you have caught taking your money.