Movie Facts
Des Plaines, IL
Incident
Movie Facts called and asked if we wanted to advertise in their brochure. I said, 'absolutely not, ' and thought that was the end of it. (I do quite a bit of advertising between my businesses, but have found that advertising at the theatre is not productive. I am in charge of all of the advertising we do.) Sometime later, they called and my husband answered—they asked him to VERIFY info—and asked him the simple questions first. Company name, phone number, etc. Then they snuck in the, 'as agreed, the fee will be x number of dollars for 6 months. But, if you buy 2 more months now, we'll give you an additional 2 months for free. Are you interested?' He said that he wasn't (thinking all the time he was simply verifying information and a contract I had agreed to.) Fast forward to 2 months later. Several hours of phone conversations later with Erica and Betty, until I said, 'Look, I am not wasting any more time on this. You have the facts of the case. One of your salespeople fraudulently claimed we'd agreed. My husband is guilty of believing what he was told, namely that this was an agreed-upon contract. We will not pay you anything and do not want your advertising. The only further contact I expect from you is an apology for wasting our time and for employing fraudulent salespeople. Goodday.' Betty said she had nothing to apologize for and we hung up. Multiple abusive phone calls followed, and now the legal department is threatening action. We have been in business for decades and NEVER failed to pay a bill. I refuse to pay this on principle—I am not going to reward someone who took a page out of the phone companies slamming techniques. Because the bill is only a couple of hundred dollars, my guess is that most businesses pay rather than deal with the exhausting bouts of abusive phone calls.
Damage Resulting
The repeated, abusive phone calls are obviously a huge waste of time, to the extent, now, that they are expensive as both I and my husband have waited to try and work this out, missing other business appointments.
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