Fling.com, Gpnethelp.com, Webdate.com, Webdate Inc., R&K Net Media Fling.com, Gpnethelp.com, Webdate.com, Webdate Inc., R&K Net Media Charged Bank Card Fraudulently For Two Years. Miami Beach Florida
GPNETHELP.COM, FLING.COM, WEBDATE.COM, Webdate, Inc, or R&K Net Media, has fraudulently charged you for services, now what do you do. You should file a small claims case against them and name GPNETHELP.COM and FLING.COM as the defendants.
Here are the facts. This is a scam operation that is hiding itself under layers of legal nonsense, false business entities. They refuse to provide contact information which, as in our case, took hours of research to determine who they really are, and where they are at.
They charged our business card for over two years before we caught it. They then claim they are only responsible for 6 months of the fraudulent charges. Contacting any of their offices or numbers, up to and including their lawyers will get you nowhere. The name they used for these charges looked like a legitimate company; they claim to protect the interest of their clients. It is actually seen as a way to make it next to impossible to track them down and not make it obvious who they really are. GPNETHELP.COM sounds like a legitimate company. If they had stated that it was FLING.COM we would have taken immediate notice that this is not something our business would have had charges with.
The best solution available is to file a small claims case through your local court. They cannot claim you are subject to their terms of service agreement if you never authorized the charges, and will have to defend the claim in your jurisdiction. Regardless of what they might attempt to tell you.
They will not have standing to force you to go to Florida to file your claim if you never signed up for their service, and their self-serving terms of service are basically useless and cannot be enforced under such circumstances.
These are the company names hidden from you and, where their offices are located:
Webdate, Inc
705 Washington Ave 2nd Floor
Miami Beach, FL. 33139
Telephone: (305) 695-6710
R & K Net Media
705 Washington Ave
Miami Beach, FL 33139-6209
Telephone: (305) 695-4221
If you do call, be warned they are not going to do anything except to tell you there is nothing they will or can do. You are in essence wasting your time.
Best course of action is to file a small claims lawsuit and make them defend it in court.
Not that it will get you any other results, because if you call their attorney will also refuse to provide you with any information. But here is the lawyers that represent them. And they are a piece of work just like their client.
Lawrence G. Walters, Esq.
781 Douglas Avenue
Altamonte Springs, FL 32714
This is as about as shady as I've seen it get. But I am sure there are worse out there.
John
Warren, Michigan
U.S.A.
2 Updates & Rebuttals
lamazou
USALawrence gpnethelp.com
#3
Sat, September 19, 2009
Lawrence, If your a attorney then you should know the customer has not (60) days but (180) days to file a chargeback or cancel. In some cases even longer.
People its simple if you contact the company that you believe billed you for a unauthorized charge - Contact the company if they don't respond or you cant reach them - Contact your credit card compant and do a chargeback - Merchants hate chargeacks they must stay under 1% of their total net per month or risk losing their accounts. The more chargebacks they accumalate the chances of them losing their merchant acocunt increases.
Now, Its not nice to use that to your advantage - Call them if the charge is not a valid charge and then dispute it The consumer always gets the benefit of the doubt - Even if they have your IP Address you win - But then the company can take you to collections for the balance owed. But you need to make sure your not trying to defraud the company.
The customer almost wins when its comes to a credit card dispute
Obivously this attorney isn't telling you the whole story just wants you to be in the dark.
Lawrence
Altamonte Springs,Florida,
U.S.A.
Response to billing complaints
#3REBUTTAL Individual responds
Thu, June 25, 2009
This reply is to John's post and is submitted by the attorney referenced in the post as the legal representative of the companies listed in the post. Initially, because this forum does not generally allow for the sharing of either a complainant's full name or their email address, neither I nor my client (Fling.com and GPNetHelp.com (the billing descriptor for Fling.com)) have any way to investigate this complaint at this stage. I would invite the complainant to contact the companies by one of the various methods to contact the companies (which are publicly available on their websites) which I have set forth below.
It appears from John's post that the companies already gave John a refund in the amount of six (6) months' membership fees. Although John suggests there is something wrong with only giving him a six (6) month credit, I view it, and I would think most people would view it, as a very generous refund policy. The Federal Fair Credit Billing Act requires that any disputed charge be raised within sixty (60) days of the issuance of the statement on which such disputed charge appeared, or the right to dispute such charge will be deemed waived and the credit card company or bank will not be under any obligation to refund any amounts to the consumer. In fact, the founder of this website has an article stating you must dispute within sixty (60) days, see here: http://www.ripoffreport.com/reports/0/230/RipOff0230613.htm. I think we can all agree that the limit of sixty (60) days is far less than two (2) years and certainly less than the six (6) month credit that John has admittedly received. Therefore, if anything, John's complaint illustrates the lengths to which the companies John is complaining about have gone to assist him.
If John is really interested in investigating the nature of these charges (putting aside why he overlooked unknown monthly charges for at least 24 months) then he should contact the companies' fraud department to confirm IP addresses, etc that were used to open up the account and access the site. The companies take alleged credit card fraud very seriously and cooperate with law enforcement to identify the misuse of credit card information. We would suggest John contact the appropriate law enforcement agency so they may investigate this matter; or, if John will provide us with information to identify his account, we will contact local law enforcement ourselves because if John's allegations are true, the companies have been defrauded as well.
The companies operate a network of successful online websites, which serve hundreds of thousands of satisfied customers, on a recurring basis. The companies do not in any way attempt to conceal their identity or contact information. To the contrary, their physical address can be easily found on the links: http://www.fling.com/main.php?a=content.info&page=privacy and http://www.webdate.com/privacy.html?prg=1&id=noadvert&pg=1. Additionally, the only sign on the building at this address features one of the website's names in lettering a few feet tall. Moreover, users of Fling.com will also find a link at the bottom of every page of the site titled "report abuse" which leads users to the following email: abuse@fling.com (See, http://www.fling.com/main.php?a=content.info&page=abuse&pg=1). A customer service link also appears at the bottom of every page, which leads to a customer service page (http://www.gpnethelp.com/fling/) containing a toll free customer service line, which is answered 24/7: 1-888-824-3640. Users are also provided the option of obtaining customer service by email: support@fling.com. Emails are responded to within 24 hours, and calls are answered in the order they are received. The Companies do not "refuse to provide contact information" to those who inquire. As noted above, full contact information is posted directly on the site in numerous locations to increase the likelihood that users will be able to locate it. In short, Fling.com is a reputable online dating website that openly operates in Miami Beach, Florida, and has a long history of satisfying its customers' concerns and requests.
Finally, with respect to John's defamatory references to the companies' attorney are wholly improper. Our law firm does not provide customer service assistance for its clients' many customers, and is not obligated to do so. Since we only have a first name for the complainant, we are unable to confirm whether he ever attempted to contact our firm. However, if he had, lawyers are ethically prohibited from releasing information about their clients, to anonymous individuals, upon demand. Our policy is to forward any complaints or information we receive, in such circumstances. If we received a complaint from this individual, referencing one of our clients, that message would have been forwarded to the client for handling in accordance with their customer service policies. The attempt to blame private legal counsel for a customer service/billing issue is simply inappropriate.
Lawrence G. Walters, Esq.
Weston, Garrou, Walters & Mooney
781 Douglas Ave.
Altamonte Springs, FL 32714
Larry@FirstAmendment.com
407.975.9150