On March 13th, after 15 months of service on a 12 month contract, I requested to cancel my account. We are a lending office and we changed companies and as such we no longer wished to have the "Shred-it" service.
I was told that even though the original term was 12 months, there was a clause that extended the contract for a like term unless written notice was given at least 30 days prior to the end of the term. I told them that credit card companies do not recoginize that type of language in a contract they stated it didn't matter, but since the we weren't working with the same company, they would review account and have our sales person get back with us—David Kopacz. He never did.
On April 5th, I called again and spoke with the manager—I believe his name was Kevin, since David was out of the office. He told me that they were absolutely sticking to the contract and if I wanted to cancel they would apply the full amount of early termination charges.
I then pointed out there contract also stated that they would not increase service fees upon renewal of more than 5%. When our contract "renewed" they increased our service fees from $50 to $60! A 20% increase which was in breach of their contract! He said that was a "mistake" and they would change it to $55 immediately retroactively. I informed him that was still a 10% increase. He then said "Okay, $53." I told him that was STILL more than 5% and that they were in breach of contract and as such I wanted it terminated immediately. He informed me that they made a "mistake" and since he was willing to "rectify the mistake" then they were not in breach of contract. My understanding of Washington State law, where WE are located, is that as soon as the $60 price was published on our invoice they were in breach of contract, mistake or not.
He accused me of trying to find a loophole and that there was no way he was letting us out of the contract early without the early termination fees. I still maintained that he was in breach of contract no matter if he had good intentions, but the fact that I had to bring the price increase to their attention did not lead me to believe they would have changed the price voluntarily. He claimed they would have eventually caught it and fixed it.
I told him that I did not like their business practices and just because they were willing to "fix a mistake" they were still in breach and I wanted to terminate it. He said absolutely no. I then told him that I would file a complaint with the BBB and tell my friends and business associates that I felt Shred-It was a dishonest and unethical company who refused to accept responsibility for breaching their own contract.
He then threatened me with a libel lawsuit if I went ahead and followed through with my intentions of warning people about Shred-It's bad business practices.
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