I own a small retail store. On March 1, I received a call and the caller id said "Advanced Business Services." My cashier answered the call. The caller identified himself as "an AT&T representative." He asked my cashier if she was authorized to make changes to our phone account and she said "no, I will transfer you to the correct person." That person was me.
I answered the call and the caller identified himself as "an AT&T representative." He asked if I was the person authorized to make changes to our phone service. I said yes. The caller said that our AT&T service was not setup correctly and he needed to "update it." I asked "why?" and the caller said "it's nothing major, we just need to update your account and it will save you money." I asked "is there something I need to do?" He said "no, I've updated your account." And he hung up.
On our AT&T phone statement a charge appeared on 3/2/09 for $53.45. It looked like any other charge on my phone statement and I did not notice it. Then when I got my recent statement, I noticed that both of my recent statements were $53.45 more than they had been. I looked over the statement and found a charge from ILD Teleservices, Inc. For $53.45 dated 4/1/09. It had a phone number next to it that was 1-800-433-4518.
I called the number to ILD Teleservices and explained the questionable charge. They said that I had signed up for a service with Advanced Business Systems, LLC and that I would need to call them at 888-568-6362 to dispute the charges.
Since I had notes from the 3/1/09 phone conversation and I remembered the caller id said "Advanced Business Systems, " I decided to look them up on the internet and found all sorts of different complaints.
I also called AT&T to ask if they would have called me to update my service around 3/1/09 and they said absolutely not and that I was under a two-year contract that won't be up for renewal for another six months. I asked about the charge and they said that they did not have anything to do with it. They told me that a new charge from 5/1/09 would appear on my next bill, bringing it to three charges for a total of $160.35. They also said that it was done by a third party company and there were no notes on the account about the charge so I would have to contact ILD about it.
Since I had already contacted ILD and was instructed to call Advanced Business Services, LLC, I placed the call. I announced that they had placed unauthorized charges on my phone bill. The woman who answered, Laney, tried to sell the service to me. I said that I don't want the service, I didn't order the service and I did not authorize the charge. She said that she could issue a refund for one of the charges and that it would take 2 to 3 months to get the credit. She also said that someone else could call me back to issue the refunds against the other two charges.
I did get a call back that day from Jazmy at Advanced Business Services, LLC and she claimed that one of my employees authorized the charges. I explained that my employee did not authorize the charge and that I had notes from the conversation in which the sales person misrepresented himself. I explained to her that regardless of whether I received the refund I am very unhappy with the way that they defraud people of their money. I also explained that I would be filing complaints with the FTC and BBB. I've also filed a consumer complaint with the State's Attorney Generals fraud division.
This company is guilty of criminal fraud and the government should file criminal charges as well as force them to offer refunds to everyone who has been defrauded.
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