Itellas Communications falsely claims I owe $124.95 after I already closed the account & uses collection agency to try to collect Birmingham, Alabama
I called Itellas Communications and left a voice mail message the morning of January 25 to cancel my service on January 25. I also went to their web site, www.itellas.com, to cancel their service. At 10:55 am I received an email from support@itellas.com on 1/25/10 as follows: "This is to confirm you have closed your Itellas account effective 2-25-2010..." (not Jan. 25, 2010!)
On January 27, 2010, Itellas billed my SunTrust card for $24.95. I filed a dispute with SunTrust because I closed the account on January 25, and the bank issued me a credit for $24.95.
On April 7, 2010, I received a surprise call from a Mr. Steve Compton of PRA Recovery, a collection agency, on behalf of Itellas. He claimed I owed Itellas $124.95. I told him that I owed Itellas nothing, Furthermore, I never received any email, postal mail, or calls from Itellas itself regarding an amount of $124.95!
I forwarded the January 25 email from Itellas to the collection agency. Then, I received a letter from PRA Recovery which threatened litigation. Itellas Communications is disreputable, and I would appreciate if very much if you would investigate the matter on my behalf. Thank you
1 Updates & Rebuttals
Itellas, LLC
United States of AmericaHere's what REALLY happened...
#2UPDATE Employee
Sat, September 11, 2010
This customer was on a monthly billing plan, which automatically bills their credit card on the same day each month. For example. if you signed up on January 27, then you would be billed again on Feb. 27. We don't give refunds except under special circumstances, so if you don't want to be billed, you have to close your account BEFORE the day of your billing.
This customer claims they left a voicemail, but that is impossible since we do not have a voicemail system that is accessible to customers. They waited 2 days after being charged, then followed the proper procedure to close the account. The system issued a close request email, and the account was marked for closure. However, since the billing had already been done for the upcoming month, the account was set to close 28 days in the future.
Our policies are NOT complicated, and we are not one of those companies who has hidden fine print or misleading practices. We just ask customers to be accountable for their part of the agreement.
Instead, this customer yelled "fraud" and charged back the monthly payment, which not only takes the money out of our account, but it costs us additional fees, time & labor to process all the paperwork, and a ton of other hassle. Since we were not responsible for the situation, we did turn this customer over to our collection agency to recover the amount owed, plus a collection fee which is ALSO detailed in our Terms of Service.
The crux of the issue is that the customer refused to accept responsibility for a number of things:
1) Failing to read the Terms of Service before agreeing to them
2) Failing to read the Billing policies & procedures page that's part of our Sign-up process
3) Failing to close their account before the billing took place.
We understand that there are a lot of shady companies out there, and our objective is *NEVER* to make people angry or rip people off - we wouldn't stay in business if we conducted ourselves that way. But we are trying to make a living like everyone else, and people who charge back sales out of anger and/or spite are effectively stealing from us, and we don't stand for it.
If you'd like to read our Terms of Service, please visit http://www.itellas.com/tos.php.