I made a contract with EverGreen Tree Care to clear out and haul away some trees for $3,300. Even though the deal was to charge $1,100 a month for 3 months, they charged the whole sum right away, then some days later tried to charge my credit card with an additional $29,700. Luckily, that was above the limit on my credit card; my credit card contacted me and I closed the credit card to prevent further fraudulent credit charges.
I signed the contract which clearly stated the following charges:
Subtotal: $3,000.00
Tax: $300.00
Total: $3,300.00
However, the contractor gave me a contract copy that contained fudged up the numbers by adding weird-looking zeros on top of decimal points so it could now be interpreted like this (o is the weird-looking zero with interior mostly filled with ink):
Subtotal: $3,000o00
Tax: $300o00
Total: $3,300o00
Note that the added zeros still look more like decimal points than zeros, and commas and new ". 00"s were not added. Also, if the decimal points were now really zeros, that would mean I owed EverGreen Tree Care $3.3 million ($3,300, 000.00), not $33 thousand ($33,000.00), which would be outrageous.
EverGreen Tree Care was the cheapest contractor out there, but not by much, as I had offers of $5,000.00 for the same job, so I didn't expect EverGreen Tree Care would stoop to fraudulent practices.
I am looking into pursuing all available avenues of handling this situation, including legal and law-enforcement. I just hope this report will help other people out there: if you are considering to hire EverGreen Tree Care, please don't because they are cons and scam artists.
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