I'm going to bore everyone with all of the details and quotes so I won't be accused of taking anything out of context or acting misleading in any way.
I got a speeding ticket which was close to making me over the points limit, causing me a possible driving suspension, so I called the Ticket Clinic. They told me there were no guarantees but they were the specialists and almost always produced good results, so I accepted their word in good faith, paid them the $250 fee by CC and emailed them my ticket.
I was dealing with someone named Angie, who was the assigned company representative that would handle my case. Soon after we handled all of the processing I sent her another email specifically asking,
"When will I hear from someone to be sure that it's being taken care of?" The next day the reply was "Your case is being handled by the attorney if you need to speak to someone you can contact my office and speak with Ted Hollander, Esq. Or myself. Thank you, Angie" I replied again to her "I just need to know if I will be kept informed, so I would at least know if nothing has taken place. I am trusting that you have it under control, but how will I know if you for some reason would not?"
After that there was no correspondence for about two weeks, when I sent an email two days AFTER my scheduled court date, asking "I believe you told me my court date was on the 14th. Do you know the outcome?" The response I got from Angie was "Michael, your court date has been reset I do not have the next court date as of yet. I will let you know when I receive it. Thank you, Angie" Then a couple of days later I got a call from Angie telling me that the outcome was bad, the courts would not reduce the speed to a no points violation because my driving record was bad.
My reply was "WOW, I knew that before I hired you and I could have gotten that answer myself for free. Why did you think I was hiring you. I would have been happy to just pay the ticket and move on if there weren't additional circumstances of potential point penalties I was attempting to avoid. What happened to you guys being the specialists?" Angie replied "We told you there were no guarantees, and it's not our fault that your driving record is so bad."
I demanded the name of the attorney who was supposedly representing me, and I also demanded my money back. Only after Angie talked to her boss did she call me with the name and phone # of the attorney that was hired by them. Then her boss Ted Hollander, also one of the principles of the company called me.
He disagreed with me that proper services hadn't been provided by his company. Finally after a long heated discussion, he agreed to give me my money back, but that we would part ways and he had no further obligation to me or my situation.
I called the attorney directly to get the whole story, but then all he did was ask me if I had any justifiable defense to take it to trial, which was obiously a no. If not, don't be upset with him, he was only the middle man. Thank you, good bye.
Once I realized I was on my own, I got on the internet to access my court file because I needed to find out when the "rescheduled court date" was, but totally unaware of what I was about to find out.
There was now a warrant out for my arrest for failure to appear. The next day I hustled my ass straight to that courthouse (which also happened to be about 100 miles from where I live), to get everything straightened out. The prosecutor told me that he only received a call from an attorney asking for a "phone conference pretrial, and was told no. So I was obviously very pissed off now.
After I told the prosecutor the story, he agreed that if I was willing to plead guilty to the speed, pay the warrant filing costs and court costs, he wouldn't cause me any additional problems and would recall the warrant. I quickly agreed and paid about $250 directly to the courts.
I called Ted Hollander for two days and finally got a returned phone call. When I told him that the attorney hired by his company never even went to court, he told me that he wasn't sure why that was, but since he gave me my money back and since I got the warrant resolved and the ticket paid, what was the big deal. He made several excuses for the attorney and wouldn't acknowledge that anyone did anything wrong. Telling me that maybe "once he realized he couldn't do anything for you, he must have figured that you would handle it yourself." "I've used this guy before and never had any problems with him."
If I was going to handle it myself? When was he going to tell me? Before or after I got arrested on the failure to appear warrant. Oh ya, maybe he could have told me the day I called him to get the whole story, which was also four days AFTER my court date that he had supposedly gone to. Hollanders final words right before I hung up on him, "I don't know what else you would expect me to do."
I also found out more yesterday about this attorney. His office is in Toledo, about 230 miles from where I got my ticket. They are definitely the specialists! What a scam. I hope this news travels.
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