This company is a complete sham!
A man going by the name "Mr Branch" called us to offer debt collection services for our business. He claimed that August Investments was a licensed debt collection company with a network of lawyers across the country. They wanted to serve as our company's collection department helping us with all stages of collection to prevent accounts from becoming delinquent. Supposedly their services would never cost us anything as they collected their fees above and beyond what is owed to us from the people that owe it.
We had previously won a court judgment against 2 people and needed them to be foreign filed in another state in order for us to collect on them. August Investments told us we needed to pay up front for court filing fees, but that they would be able to collect them along with their fees from the party who owed us money, and would therefore refund the court fees to us at that time.
They had us use their website www.augustinvestmentsinc.com to pay via paypal with a credit card.
Many months later they still had not done anything to file our judgments or collect our money. They continually gave me the run around on the phone blaming different people in their office for not handling things properly.
The main guy "Mr Branch" initially said he would see the entire thing through and encouraged me to call as often as I'd like to follow up on my account. After a while he got tired of my calls. He had run out of excuses. He also got very agitated when I began questioning him on how his company was structured. I was trying to determine who I should be speaking with to get answers since he was continually unable to give me any updates. He didn't want to take responsibility for anything, yet he didn't want to put me in contact with anyone that would either.
I was willing to wait on hold on the telephone for the appropriate help. This made him very angry. He even became belligerent with me and my husband. He started talking about coming to our home and 'taking this to the street' to handle it. He said "I was on the street before I worked here and I'm not afraid to go back". He even called us back a couple of times asking for our home address. We told him to please see to it that we were sent our money, but he never did.
"Mr Branch" acted like I ruined his day because I was asking for results or my money back. Over less than $2000 he threatened our lives!
I wrote and sent a certified letter asking for my money to be refunded since they still hadn't done anything as they promised (it has been over 5 months). They signed for my letter and completely ignored my request.
I have called many many MANY times and have heard every excuse in the book as to why the accounts payable lady "Phyllis Bagwell" wasn't available to speak with me. I FINALLY got her on the phone the other day and she used the excuse that she was in a meeting unable to help me at the moment. She PROMISED to call me back later that day assuring me that it wasn't the first she had heard of my case and she would take care of it. As you can guess... She never called back.
August Investments has a VERY POOR Better Business Bureau rating. I cannot find them listed as licensed debt collectors, and I do not see them listed with the Bar Association as real lawyers. I wish I had known all of this BEFORE giving them my hard earned money. They prey on people that are too busy to handle things themselves, and then exploit them for all they can get out of them.
In the meantime they offered their assistance in collecting a $1200 refund for us. "Mr Branch" said they would do it as a "favor" for the other business we were giving them. Well, you can probably already guess... Once they had our money they kept ALL OF IT.
August Investments STOLE our money. They collected it on our behalf and refused to give any of it to us.
RUN AWAY as fast as you can from this company. And if you have been ripped off by them already PLEASE file a police report with the Houston Police Department as they can and will put the owner Micheal Triplett behind bars if they had enough complaints on him to do so.
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