Complaint / Review
Bench Craft Company
Credit card fraud, misrepresentation, dishonest sales people, high pressure tactics

I received a call from a salesman at Bench Craft Company on 7/30/07. We discussed advertising on a bench at a local golf course. $400 to get my name on a bench for 2 years sounded like a pretty good deal. He said he would fax a contract for me to review and sign that day. The contract never came over, so I called him back to let him know.

He said he would fax it the next day as he was leaving the office. I never recieved it the next day, so I called him back again. Again he promised to re fax it.By the third day I hadn;t recieved it, so I told him to forget about it. At that point he explained to me that I had already purchased.

I asked him how that was possible. He said since I had given him my credit card over the phone, I had already agreed. He was able to get my credit by saying he needed to put it on the contract to fax it to me.

I never recieved the contract by fax, but did recieve it by mail. It was stapled to a letter dated 8/1/07 that states in gigantic letters that Contract Shall Not Be Cancelled.

The contract is not for bench advertising as we discussed. It is for a small ball washer sign.in the signature line, the salesman has written in: per phone.

I disputed the charges with my credit card company, and easily won the dispute. The controller of Bench Craft still plans on sending this to collections. I have told these guys over and over that I don't want to do business with them at all. They tried to redo the contract and sell me bench advertising. I told them no.

They state they have already put up my sign, with the wrong agency name and if I pay them an extra $50 they will put the correct name on it. I finally offered them $100 to settle the matter.

Although I enjoy reading thier collection of preprepared letters to scare people into buying things they didn't order, but it's worth $100 to not have to deal with the collection agency.

The BBB has 180 complaints on them in the last 6 months. The controller at thier company didn't seem to think that was alot of complaints.in comparison, housevalues has 178 over the same period.in my opinion, housevalues is the biggest scam ever perpetrated against real estate agents. The general public is duped by housevalues also, but the agents have to pay for the priveledge where the public gets duped for free.