Sterling National Lenders and many other companies like them who claim to be mortgage lenders or other credit repair agencies send in an ad via fax or email. Once we receive the ad we call them to get credit card information and find out how long to run the ad. They usually set the ad up for 4-6 weeks.
After the ad has run the entire term we get a chargeback and it's usually from American Express because they usually always side with their customer. American Express will want proof of the cardholders signature which we usually don't have because these companies are usually out of state and the information was taken by phone.
We caught onto this scam a few years ago and now we won't set the ad up without first faxing a contract for the cardholder to sign and fax back. We had a contract signed by a William Mack so we were covered and I guarantee you that you can never get Mr. William Mack on the phone but when I told the girl working there that I had a signed contract he got on the phone with me real fast.
He said that he wasn't disputing our charges that it was another companies charges that he was disputing, likely story. We realized that he had renewed the same ad by phone and we hadn't gotten a signed contract for that second run. We will end up having to eat that I'm sure. We are considering whether we should continue to accept American Express anymore as there are some major flaws in their procedure and the way they handle these types of things as they have to realize it's the same types of companies who do this over and over and over again.
One thing I can say is that this type of thing will not happen to us again. I hope this helps someone out there who is in the same type of business as us or anyone else that this company or others like them might try to scam.
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