Our company was contacted by a carrier of ours stating that commercial investigations had contacted them and stated they were indebted to our company and that they needed to make payment immediately. The carrier gave this company their bank account information (which is a bad idea) and then realized that they had already paid us for the debt last year. This company by then had electronically deducted $7000 from their bank account.
I contacted Commercial Investigations, Inc and they stated we had retained them to collect this debt a year ago. They then claimed the debtor had shown them proof of payment. The were looking to collect their "comission" for collecting the debt. The individual who was handling those issues at our company is no longer here so I asked them to send over the information they had.
They faxed over a contract that they claim was signed by our company representative. The supposed signature was our company name written on the bottom of the contract, there was no person's signature. They also faxed over an invoice showing the 10% that they felt was due to them for collecting the debt. They also informed me that they could not reimburse the carrier for their money until I paid them the 10%. I informed them that I would look into the matter and call them back.
They then continued to call repeatedly. At first, they were somewhat pleasant but very fast talkers, but after I informed them that they did not have a legitimate contract they became increasingly hostile. They continued to call about every 20 minutes. I then had them speak with the owner of our company. He informed them that if they felt we owed them the money, that they should take us to court to collect because we were not going to pay and legally had no obligation to pay.
We continued to receive phone calls after that, even though we repeatedly told them to quit calling. Each time they called they would use a different person's name, but many of the voices were the same. One man who called said he was a supervisor and when I repeated to him that we were not paying, and to seek legal action if he felt it was necessary he screamed into the phone (like a blood curdling scream). The last caller who called trying to collect used very vulgar language with my supervisor and when my supervisor told him that the call was being recorded he threatened to sue us for taping him without his consent.
The last call we received was from the same supervisor, but he was disguising his voice (it was obvious) stating that after reviewing our file they had decided to release us from our debt with them. I informed him that we had no debt with them, and if they called again we would be filing a police report for harrassment. I would assume they called us at least 20 times during the one day.
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