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How to Deal w/ Dubious 'Contracts'?
phorm asks: "It seems that for almost every service out there nowadays businesses want to fix customers into a contract. Some are pretty obvious (cellphone service, etc), but others are downright sneaky. About a year ago, my grandparents signed up for internet service with one of the bigger ISP's (Telus). They were offered an lesser rate for the first year, followed by $10/month more for following years, as well as their DSL modem for free (to be returned when service ends). None of the documentation received with the modem indicated that any 'contract' was being entered, nor were any documents signed. However, when they recently tried to cancel their service, Telus has indicated they will be charged a fee due to being within the 'contract'." Similar to EULAs, sometimes companies will enter you into a "contract" without providing anything to sign and will hold you to terms you may not even know about simply by your use of the service. How can you deal with companies practices, especially if dealing with their representatives becomes...difficult?
"On first questioning of this, they believed that they had somehow been contracted by agreeing over the phone when initial service was setup (despite that they don't remember being told about such a thing). However, when I called the ISP to dispute this, they indicated that upon connecting the service they would have been presented with a dialog indicating the contract terms and had to click 'OK' online.
My assumption would be that this was done through their setup CD, which comes with the modem. However, the ISP's software is not installed on their machine (I don't trust it not to have snoop-ware), as I had their machine manually registered through a web-interface (which did not indicate contracts at that time, I am not sure about now).
Despite this, calls to their hotline have indicated that they will not rescind the cancellation fee. Moreover, the last operator from the 'Loyalty Department' I talked to refused to separate the internet bill from the phone bill despite being told they would no longer be authorized to bill the given VISA account (they said they will not change that billing process unless given another account, and refuse to just 'send a bill' in the mail). When I questioned the legality of this the operator told me to 'get a lawyer and have them contact the legal department.' Obviously, this is an option but seems rather to be a bit extreme and I'm sure the company realizes it. So what does one do when a big company is bilking pensioners with contracts they have no proof of? Certainly there are no signed documents, and whether a particular button was clicked or not seems to have no proof except in the ISP's say-so, as well as the dubiousness of button-click legality under local law. My next step will likely be to explain the situation to VISA but then things can definitely get ugly as the ISP is also the local telco.
By the way, this is in Canada, so Canadian law would apply, but I would definitely appreciate suggestions as such cases seem more and more common."
My assumption would be that this was done through their setup CD, which comes with the modem. However, the ISP's software is not installed on their machine (I don't trust it not to have snoop-ware), as I had their machine manually registered through a web-interface (which did not indicate contracts at that time, I am not sure about now).
Despite this, calls to their hotline have indicated that they will not rescind the cancellation fee. Moreover, the last operator from the 'Loyalty Department' I talked to refused to separate the internet bill from the phone bill despite being told they would no longer be authorized to bill the given VISA account (they said they will not change that billing process unless given another account, and refuse to just 'send a bill' in the mail). When I questioned the legality of this the operator told me to 'get a lawyer and have them contact the legal department.' Obviously, this is an option but seems rather to be a bit extreme and I'm sure the company realizes it. So what does one do when a big company is bilking pensioners with contracts they have no proof of? Certainly there are no signed documents, and whether a particular button was clicked or not seems to have no proof except in the ISP's say-so, as well as the dubiousness of button-click legality under local law. My next step will likely be to explain the situation to VISA but then things can definitely get ugly as the ISP is also the local telco.
By the way, this is in Canada, so Canadian law would apply, but I would definitely appreciate suggestions as such cases seem more and more common."
First and foremost don't believe you have to accept it. Contact the company and keep asking for a supervisor. If he doesn't help, ask for his and keep it up. That works most of the time because they just can't stand dealing with you. If that doesn't work, then write a letter... no email... a real letter. That usually gets a good response. When all else fails, take it to the Net, a lawyer, local media, etc. The key is to not take no for an answer.
http://religiousfreaks.com/I could go on and on, but the point is, contracts are mostly one-sided. Why? Because we want their service.
this is only the tip of the iceberg..
the current legal and regulatory structure centering around incorporation and securities allows people to centralize power and resources while being spared the majority of the risks.
This results in an uneven playing field where incumbent corporate owners have tremenous amounts of market power, but the common man has none.
The ways to combat this are:
-from labor standpoint.. pro union laws which allow labor to do the same thing as the companies that employ them.. centralize power and resources without reprisal from anti-union companies.
-from a consumer standoint.. pro consumer laws which put a cap on contract demands. Consumer unions are not enough.. they will only be able to tackle "main stream" products.. regulation to balance out concepts like limited liability and corporate personhood are needed.
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What about a cell phone? Most of them have massive early-termination fees.
They have to, they subsidized that cool new feature laden cell phone you are carrying, US cell phone deals are not as one-sided as you think. If you take the phone and quit the service they lose big time. Some parts of the world do not subsidize, you pay full retail for your phone, and customers have an easier time changing providers. US consumers have voted with their dollars, they would rather have the Motorola Razor for $50 than have an easier time switching providers.
...I talked to refused to separate the internet bill from the phone bill despite being told they would no longer be authorized to bill the given VISA account
The question kind of answers itself. You've explained the situation and they've explained the situation. As it stands they've lost both a data customer AND a phone customer.
It is much easier these days to switch phone service than internet service. I dropped Telus completely about 8 years ago (Fido for cell, Shaw for data) because of exactly the kinds of complaints that you have. I honestly can't imagine doing business with Telus again nor can I imagine getting a traditional phone line for any reason.
Besides the laywer & tv suggestions brought up here, I'd also recommend regulatory bodies.
Or any organization to whom they may feel obligated to respond to (at the very least you are causing the company to pay someone to write a letter in response to your complaint).
Most people don't realize just how mean some regulatory bodies are to those they regulate. We've had telco problems resolved *the day after* a complaint was filed with the FTC (US only though).
See, when you file a complaint it *does* go on the record and it can majorly affect how a company is treated by the organization that regulates it. Companies tend to take that more seriously.
Of course I don't know if telco's in Canada have a regulatory agency, but if they do, that's something to do in addition to everything else.
My wife works for National City bank here in Michigan. She's in the chargeback department, and had mentioned to me that visa will take the money back from the merchant unless they have a signed contract/agreement to fight a customer dispute. Visa does not recognize clicking on a button or any other method of getting someone to sign-up for a service other than signed docs. Visa will take the money from the merchant without them being able to do anything and credit it back to the customer, also if the merchant violates visa's rules enough they will not be allowed to use visa for payments anymore. So I don't know what it's like in Canada, but I would recommend contacting your bank and disputing the charges saying you didn't sign any contracts what so ever, and they are unwilling to credit your account. I know National City is not on the merchant's side when it comes to these, I personally just had to have them do the same thing with some stupid credit report internet site. Good luck!
Say you had a child click "I agree." Children can't engage in contracts, right?
Silence is golden... and duct tape is silver.
They are claiming you owe them some sum of money. You dispute the claim. You don't pay. If they want their money, they will have to take legal action against you. And they'll need to demonstrate that you actually do owe them money.
They still demand a contract if you own the phone. My father bought a v60 in Hong Kong, before the US release because he liked the design and wanted to switch to a GSM phone. He got AT&T service for it, but they still demanded a 1 year contract. Why would they need it? It was no strings attached for them, he'd provided the phone, what did they need to make back?
No, the across-the-board "either you're rich enough to have lawyers or are a peon" doesn't apply to every capitalist country in the world, but seems to be largely a USA issue. In a sense it's the price you pay for the culture of not trusting your own government, or for that matter for ending up with a government which you can't trust. Unfortunately, then, yes, your only recourse are lawyers, and that's why in the USA they breed like rabbits.
Down here in Europe most things aren't solved by class action lawsuits, but by having a set of laws regarding the consumers' rights, and some government agencies whose job is to enforce those. If a company tried to screw me over, believe me, I wouldn't do any of the three options you describe. Instead I'd go to a consumer rights bureau ("Verbraucherzentrale") and see what they have to say about it. Because it's their job and are backed by the government. They can have a lot more teeth than a lawyer, if it's warranted.
In a sense, it's the difference between having an organized police force and wild-west each-man-for-himself vigilante justice. The USA seems still stuck at the point where your rights and protection are determined by whether you can hire a posse to fight for them. Only now it's the more expensive lawyers with ties and briefcases, instead of desperados with sombreros and Winchester guns. Most of the rest of the world moved over to more efficient model of having a centralized "police" equivalent.
And let me stress that again: it's not just that it's more fair (I could get help even if I didn't have a dime to pay for a lawyer's advice), it's also more efficient for society as a whole. You don't have to feed armies of lawyers when a handful of government officials can do the same job _and_ serve as a better deterrent. A company can imagine they'll smoke _me_ with legalese gibberish, or bully me into submission, or just hope that I don't want to pay a lawyer. But they will know from the start that they're never going to bully the government into submission, and that there'll be someone there who reads legalese as fluently as it gets and knows if what is in there is legal or not.
If you will, it's like in the police vs everyone-with-his-own-posse analogy again. A police is more efficient than everyone hiring his own desperados to guard his ranch, because it _doesn't_ have to actually send policemen to stand guard on every ranch. Just the knowing that that police force exists is enough of a deterrent for 99% of the population.
Downside: of course, you need to trust that the government is on your side and not just ruling for the highest corporate bidder. I.e., it comes in handy to have a real multi-party system where they have to work hard for their votes.
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I had an Earthlink DSL account in the US, and although I was aware through common knowledge that all local DSL carriers considered a customer to be in a contract from the time the modem connected to the line, I made a point to look for one at every point in the set-up process. The only thing that vaguely resembled legal mumbo jumbo was in the software envelope which I never used.
I had nothing but problems with the service itself and cancelled within two months. They informed me that I would be charged $150 for early termination and another $200 if I didnt return their POS modem. I told them to stuff it and I refused to pay. They sent me to a collection agency and I immediately sent a letter disputing the debt and asking for proof of contract. The collection account was wiped clean and never appeared on my credit record. I even kept their crappy modem out of principle.
Although corporations can be a brick wall to deal with, collection agencies are held to very strict regulations and a quick stroke of the pen leaves them without option. These companies think they are screwing you when they send you off to collections, but infact they are playing right into your hands.
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As I understand it judges have upheld EULAs as valid since you can be "reasonably expected" to know software comes with such a thing (yeah, right, like they teach that in schools. You don't know that until you have bought your first PC program). This justification fails to explain why any non-standard terms in an EULA (i.e. that go beyond the common ground present in all EULAs and as such aren't common sense anymore) still apply.
Additionally I do not see how a company can turn a sale into a licensing deal post sale. The sales contract predates the EULA, it did not make any mentioning of any licenses and it did not state that additional contracts are required to use the software. As such I'd argue that a piece of software sold without informing the customer of the required additional contract prior to the sale is fraudulent as the seller claimed the product was something it isn't (sale vs. license).
Furthermore I will not accept it as legal to use technical measures (DRM, installers, whathaveyou) to interfere with customer rights granted by the law. The law gave these rights to prevent companies from dictating terms through the vast imbalance of power (i.e. the contract is not negotiated and the company can dictate it any way they please, even worse if they and their competitors form an oligopoly through agreeing on using similarily exploitative terms and there is noone else to turn to), if a company was allowed to design a product to deny those rights that would undermine the whole purpose of the law. But then again I'm a proponent of making exploiting loopholes in a law a serious crime.
The European Union has a directive that severely limits the terms that can be present in a contract that is non-negotiable and presented by a large company. You could try proposing something comparable to your representative(s).
This may apply here:
(e) requiring any consumer who fails to fulfil his obligation to pay a disproportionately high sum in compensation;
As a sidenote, many online gaming services (MMOs especially) fall afoul of this one by keeping any advance fees the customer paid when he is banned for any reason:
(f) authorizing the seller or supplier to dissolve the contract on a discretionary basis where the same facility is not granted to the consumer, or permitting the seller or supplier to retain the sums paid for services not yet supplied by him where it is the seller or supplier himself who dissolves the contract;
Justice is the sheep getting arrested while an impartial judge declares the vote void.
I've been here and here is the answer that worked for me.
Write a letter contesting the bill, stating your reasons, clearly indicate a means of redress (i.e. a written letter detailing the type of data they don't have time to produce but a reasonable person would accept as necessary for them to make their case), and then change the account number of the credit card they may be charging and close your account they are debiting (banks will transfer your history making this a way of changing your account number). This is what will happen - they will bill you, they will dun you, they will sell your name to bill collectors who will threaten you with finely crafted threatening letters and phone calls calculated to get under your skin. Despite all this ultimately you will not pay a cent because there are a lot of other fish in the sea and just as it is too expensive for you to sue the same applies to them.
When you are dunned it is actually good news because dunning firms have fewer resources and usually follow a script; emphasis on usually. When you get a dunning letter print out a form letter you have prepared and mail it back within 30 days requiring proof of the debt and disputing the payment. For dunning calls use caller ID and skip the phone calls you can't identify - let them leave a message. Get good at checking and returning messages so people understand leaving messages works.
Check your credit history occassionally and write a letter to a credit reporting agency indicating any errors (e.g. an entry for a bill for which you are, in fact, not liable). These errors will be removed for a few months - then send another letter. Keep it up for a few years and you are done.
Yes, it takes years for this to wash out of the system, because you are dealing with a machine that calculates marginal returns and acts accordingly. Just don't be a jerk while you are doing this. Stay polite and civil and they won't get angry enough to make an example of you.
If it ever does come to court you will have lots of documents showing you tried to resolve the matter in good faith but they were unresponsive to your reasonable requests (i.e. the letter I mention in the first sentence and all the letters you wrote subsequently).
Remember "the nail that stands up is hammered flat." Don't attract attention to yourself or you will get burned with this approach.
And remember this is my story so your results will definitely differ. Best of luck!
Had I been working there I'd have reported you for sending mass-faxes which is illegal in the UK.
Still I certainly take the point that drastic action is sometimes required to get things which are owed to you.
I started down the small-claims court several times to get refunds I was owed which never seemed to get processed in a timely manner. Never made it all the way through since the companies settled early, but it definitely woke them up.
My sole experience with calling the BBB has also been positive. A friend of mine purchases an Apple Macintosh about 10 years ago and we were having trouble getting it serviced by the local Apple Service Shop. A call to the BBB and an apple employee called me and fixed the problem (and sent me 2 apple t-shirts whoot).
I reallize that my one experience doesn't mean that the BBB is effective as a whole and would be interested in hearing from anyone who didn't get things cleared up after calling them.
You're right. What the guy meant was "in the absense of a signature or recorded conversation, you have no *proof* of a contract," since we're not talking about a situation where witnesses are present.
I suspect the terms of the contract in this case were contained in a document such as the application for the account.
The "ask slashdot" would indicate otherwise - they were doing it through a web form that he never signed up for. If your contention were correct, this wouldn't be a story, as that happens all the time and is completely legitimate (assuming the salesperson doesn't contradict the contract terms as they often do).
Rather, his point seems to be that nothing of the sort was ever agreed to, written, oral, or webform. This seems to be following a disturbing practice of many companies lately, namely they try to lie to you and tell you a contract exists when in fact you agreed to no such thing, in any form, not even signing at the bottom of the tiny print or saying "OK" on the phone.
Personally, things like this are why I pay for damned near everything with a credit card. I've never had to resort to it, but if it comes down to it, you call your card, tell them what's up, and they investigate. If this guy is right, and the telco has no evidence whatsoever of a contract, they don't get paid. And if they try to continue to charge after that, the card company can rescind their ability to take that card. And they better not try to ruin your credit through TransUnion's database (or the other two).
Unsolicited commercial faxxing is illegal in many parts of the world- at least sans the USA.
Now lets recall that this is:
- solicited: they asked to get copies of the receipts, multiple times.
- non-commercial: this is an individual who is a customer of the company, sending requested information.
While all you want, but it sounds like that wouldn't last long in court anyway
-M
when you see the word 'Linux', drink!
I have, unfortunately. I live in Quebec, and used to subscribe to Telus Mobility. I had a pay-as-you-go contract, and started it out with a $50 card. This got me a per-minute rate of 25 cents.
The first month of my service, I accidentally let the balance expire. I called them up, and the representative said it was no problem. They said that since it was my first time that this had happened, they would be happy to put the balance back. I set up a $10/mth auto-billing on my credit card so that this would never happen again. Telus's policy that if you start out with a low rate (25 cents), you can keep it as long as you renew your balance.
Everything was fine for a year or two. They kept charging $10/mth, and I kept getting 25 cents per minute. Then, one day, all of a sudden, my minutes-remaining figure plummeted! I called up Telus, and they told me that everything looked fine with my account. I was paying 40 cents per minute, as I should be. "Wait a second," I said, "I'm supposed to be paying 25 cents a minute. I started out on a $50 card."
They'd have none of this. "Sorry sir, you let your balance expire, and so we put you back on the 40 cent per minute plan."
I tried to tell them that their own representative had cleared that up, and that I'd been paying 25 cents per minute for the past year. That's when they hit me with the showstopper "No, sir, I'm sorry, you've been paying 40 cents per minute for the past year." I tried to tell them that, no, this was impossible, the only reason I noticed something was wrong is because they suddenly switched me from 25 to 40 just 5 minutes ago. I noticed when the number of minutes left in my account dropped by almost half. But they stubbornly continued telling me that I had been hallucinating for the past year.
That's when I decided to jump ship. While I probably could have tolerated the issue if they'd simply said "Sorry sir, it was a mistake to let you continue at 25 cents per minute, and we've only just corrected this now. There's nothing we can do." then I would have been upset, but understanding. However, the moment they started lying to my face, and making crap up, that was the final straw.
So what happened after all of this? I switched to Rogers. Just another big company, sure, but they haven't lied to my face yet, and I'm getting a much better per-minute rate. I know that many people think Rogers is evil, but for me, it's sufficient. My phone works, I get the rate that I'm promised, and everything is right in the world.
for going with telus... Should have gone with Shaw. As an ex-Telus employee who worked in the business repair department, I thought it odd when I was first hired that virtually no one on the floor had Telus DSL at home, even though as employees we were offered it at $16/month. Then I worked there, it explained everything. Telus is anything but a communications leader, they are totally a follower and customer service, despite the best effort of the call centre staff, isn't a company value. I'd sign up with Shaw. About your phone, it might be time to consider VOIP, however, if I remember my training correctly Telus cannot disconnect phone service to an account as long as the BASIC PHONE CHARGES have been paid. Even if you have a $2000 1-900 number balance, CRTC regulations prohibit it. They can kill your features, but they MUST provide basic land line service and all you are required to pay to maintain that service is the basic charge plus taxes. It's in the tariff information in the front of the phone book, if they want to get into it with you, tell them to look it up. BTW, Shaw hs Internet and Primus voip is still cheaper than any telus solution.
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It's very hard for me to believe that there wasn't a contract in there somewhere.
I think a good question to ask, then, is "what was the text of the agreement that you claim I agreed to?". For this debate to be settled, we'll need to see (1) a copy of the terms of service that were agreed to at the time, to see if it says "can be changed, and you agree by continuing to use the service" -- I'd guess that it probably does say that, but we need to see it to be sure, and the ISP needs to provide that text; (2) if it does say that, what are the terms now?; and (3) what does it say about cancelling your account and any related time limits?
I don't think we can settle this without that information. So I think the original poster needs to talk to their credit card issuer and get them to provide that information, since it seems as if the ISP isn't exactly going out of its way to do it when the poster asks. In fact, I have to wonder at this reluctance -- if they have ready evidence that yes, a contract was agreed to, why have they not produced it? Cynical, I know, but big business these days seems all too willing to extract money from people who these days are being bombarded by so many other expenses that they can't afford to be cheated (gas, wage increases being behind, etc).
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