Complaint Review: ABC Distributing - LTD Commidities

Recently I received a letter addressed to "accounts payable manager" from ltd commodities/abc distributing informing me that there is a past due balance on my account and that if this is not paid within 10 days it will be turned over for collection going against my company credit

First of all we are a business and have never applied for credit with ltd commodities or abc distributing, but apparenetly one of my employees went to their web site and applied for credit in the company name for her personal use without authroization. Ltd commodities/abc distributing only extends credit to businesses, not individuals.

I called the number on the invoice received from ltd commodities/abc distributing in reference to these late charges to inform them that my company has never applied for credit there and that these are unauthorized charges, however, when I called the number listed I was only given the option to leave a message and informed by a recording that i would receive a call within 24 hrs. This did not happen so I called again and left another message.

Finally I received a call back and was greatly disappointed to find that any employee with any company can go online and apply for credit and get approved with no signature of owner or authorization from the business and that if the employee does not pay for items they ordered it gets turned over for collection in the company name.

I was informed by ltd commodities/abc distributing that they have placed several calls to our business and mailed many invoices in reference to this past due fee at which time i informed them that the individual employee who set up this account without my knowledge also receives our daily mail and answers our phone and that apparently she has been entercepting any mail/calls received from them and not forwarding it to me.

I was told that i should "hire more honest employees" if this is such a problem for me to which I informed them that they should take a long hard look at their policies and stop extending credit to any employee with any company that applies.

They refused to close the account until the balance is paid in full. I informed them that I did not apply/open/authorize this account and did not place the order and that i am not responsible for the outstading balance. They informed me that if this balance is not paid in full they will turn me over to collection.

It is my opinion that this company fraudulently extends credit to unauthorized employees and if that employee does not pay then the company is held responsible for something that is completely out of our control.

I would like to see some sort of action taken so that companies like ltd commodities/abc distributing are not allowed to extend creit to individual employees on a whim!

Tonya
Norfolk, Virginia
U.S.A.