This complaint is being made by me on behalf of my business, an LLC, which I wholly own. I used the services of eFax to provide internet fax services to my company. My customers would send a fax to eFax which would then be forwarded to my email in an encrypted document.
My grievance with eFax only has to deal with a billing issue, not their service.in my opinion, eFax provided an excellent service for a very reasonable price and I was very happy with them until a billing dispute arose. Also, at all times during this dispute, the customer service representatives from eFax were very polite and courteous.
As a result of how I felt my billing issue was handled, I ended up closing my account with eFax.
I have full records of whom I spoke with and when I spoke with them. Due to privacy issues, I will leave the names of the people I spoke with out of this complaint, and will just refer to them as customer service people.
Oddly, I don't think I have the real names of the people I spoke with, but rather their nicknames. The reason is because most of the people I spoke with had a strong Indian accent and one admitted to me he was taking the call in India. Each of these people I spoke with had an Indian accent used very American names that you might find on Beverly Hills 90210 which is why I do not believe they provided me with their real names.
Nature of my grievance:
My company was originally using an eFax service that allowed unlimited incoming faxes for $12.95 a month.
On the 18th of every month, eFax charges my credit card for the next months service. On Oct. 18, I my credit card was charged $12.95 for services from Oct. 18 - Nov. 17.
I decided I wasn't receiving enough faxes to make the service worthwhile, so on Oct. 24th, I called eFax to cancel my service. The customer service representative offered a more appropriate program that would allow me to receive 20 pages a month and a per page charge for any excess. This program would only cost $4.95, a bargain.
I asked when this would take effect and I was told immediately and that my next month charge will be $4.95. There was not to be any other charges for the Oct. 18 - Nov. 17 cycle as I already paid $12.95 and will be receiving the $4.95 plan. Also, the company told me I would not be refunded a pro-rated refund as a result of lowering my plan, and I agreed to this.
On Nov. 18th, my credit card was charged $8.94, not $4.95 as originally agreed. The charge was for next months service at $4.95 plus a pro-rated charge of $3.99 for the period Oct. 24 - Nov 17 on the $4.95 plan. As mentioned above, I already fully paid eFax for the Oct. 24 - Nov. 17 cycle with my $12.95 payment on Oct. 18th; so this pro-rated $3.99 charge resulted in a double billing for that Oct. 18 - Nov. 17 cycle.
I called eFax customer service and notified them of the problem. It took awhile to explain to the representative how the $3.99 pro-rated charge amounted to being a double charge. The representative talked with his supervisor and they agreed that this was a double charge.
Instead of refunding the $3.99 on my credit card, the company would credit my eFax account $3.99 by subtracting this amount on my December 18th invoice. I agreed to this.
On December 18th, my credit card was charged another $8.94, $4.95 for the Dec. 18 - Jan. 17 billing cycle plus a $3.99 service level adjustment.instead of subtracting the $3.99, the added it. So I now paid twice for this.
Needless to say, I was furious, this was the second time they made a billing mistake. I decided to call eFax to quickly resolve this.
I made 5 calls to customer service on the night of Jan 9th, and every call was dropped within minutes. I called customer service again on the morning of Jan 10th, and that call was dropped. I finally called sales support and asked them to patch me through to customer service which they did.
I waited 25 minutes for someone to pickup the phone from customer service listing to the most obnoxious repetitive hold music I have ever heard. I was furious and as soon as the customer representative picked up, I immediately told him I wanted my eFax account closed and my credit card to be refunded $7.98 ($3.99 charged twice, once on Nov. 18 and again on Dec. 18).
I had to spend time with this representative explaining everything again, and he told me to hold while he looked into this. I waited another 20 minutes and he never came back, and worse, the called got disconnected again.
At this point I contacted my credit card company to begin a dispute. My credit card company told me they were very sorry and they would refund my account the $7.98 immediately, but I needed to contact eFax again to cancel the account because the can not stop them from making recurring charges. Unfortunately, this refund would be a write-off with my credit card company as they will not bother seeking the $7.98 from eFax because it was not cost effective for them to do so.
I felt bad as my credit card company has always treated me well, and as long as I have to contact the company again to cancel my account, I'll make another attempt to recover the $7.98 from them.
That night, I got an email from the eFax representative who I spoke with earlier that day who put me on hold for 20 minutes. He apologized for the disconnect and said he arranged for the $7.98 to be a credit on my eFax account and I would not be billed next month (like I said, they are very polite).
The email didn't matter at this point as I was determined to close my account. Further, I found it interesting that he did that when my first words to him were to close my account and refund my credit card.
At this point, I did not want to wait on the phone again for a customer representative so I tried canceling my account online using the online chat. The person I communicated with at eFax apologized and said my account had a $7.98 credit and if I stayed with them they will give me an additional $10 in free services. I declined and asked to close my account and refund the $7.98.
She cancelled the account and gave me an email to write to in order to get the $7.98 refunded as she wasn't authorized to do that.
I wrote to that email address and provided an explanation as to why I am entitled to a $7.98 refund on my credit card. They responded with an email that my account has been closed and that I will need to contact customer support to get the $7.98 refunded.
So I called customer support again. This time they picked up immediately. I asked the lady who I spoke with to refund the $7.98 to my credit card and explained why I was entitled to it. She responded that everything was fine because my eFax account had already been credited the $7.98.
I told her that this is all well and good, but a $7.98 credit on my eFax account doesn't help me because I cancelled the service and will not be able to receive the benefit of that credit if it stays with eFax. I again told her the only way I can get the benefit of that $7.98 was to refund it to my credit card.
She put me on hold, spoke with her supervisor, and came back telling me this was company policy and no refund will be made to my credit card, the $7.98 will stay as a credit to my eFax account which I closed.
I asked to speak with her supervisor and she transferred me to him. While talking with him, it was clear he was dead set against refunding the $7.98 to my credit card. After talking with him for about 5 minutes, the call got disconnected.
It seems these call disconnects is a problem with this company as the calls are probably haphazardly routed to India. I know they are not signal fades on my cell phone because my cell phone always tells me if the drop came from a signal fade.
I called my credit card company back and told them everything that had taken place. They were very sorry and believed that I had made every attempt possible to resolve the $7.98 dispute with the merchant. I told them to go ahead and send me the letter that this has been credited back to my account.
Unfortunately, it looks like my credit card company is going to eat this loss which I don't think is fair to them.
I wrote eFax one more complaint letter today asking for the $7.98. If they pay it, I will have the credit card company reverse their write off which is the fair thing to do.
While my experience with eFax might be highly unusual, it was nevertheless an unsatisfactory experience.
I will write a follow up if they ever do refund the $7.98. They might after this grievance is filed.
Stanton
Renton, Washington
U.S.A.
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