CustomerStreet charge

powerfulone

Hello

This is a post on behalf of my girlfriend who has been unfairly treated by Customer Street, part of a chain with ufindus and recently brought by BT.

They phoned her last week and got her number from a free ad she placed on the internet. She works for herself and they phoned to sell advertising.

She was interested in the advertsing / SEO deal they had to offer, but didn't have the funds to pay there and then. The pushy salesperson said that if she gave a credit card number it would reserve the special offer but no money would be taken until she agreed.

The company then went on to charge £150.25 from her card, causing her to go overdrawn and get a £28 charge from the bank. She now is currently in the negative on the account, and the bank is investigating this and hopefully we can reclaim the funds this way. However it would be good to know what else we can do if this doesn't work.

Of course the company has refused to refund the money. The company deals with refund requests by getting a salesperson to call back to deal with it, but the sales person is only interested in making a sale, not refunding and are very arrogant and unhelpful.

The company records all communications and they even cheekily said that for £10 we can have a copy of the original recording!

I would like to find out if there is any legal recourse we can use to claim the money back, and in addition the costs £28 for the bank charge and if possible the stress and time this issue has caused. Have they broken any law by saying they wont charge the card and then proceeding to do so? Surely if you ask to be charged £10 on the phone and you are charged £100 that must be illegal. So if you ask to be charged nothing and are charged £150.25 that must be the same?

Any help would be much appreciated - thanks for your time.

Martin

exel1966

The Consumer Credit Act covers eventualities like this. Speak to your card company, advise them of the problem, mention your protection under the CCA and ask them to put the debt on hold which will stop any potential interest being added. It is then their responsibility to rectify the situation with Customer Street, but be 100% sure that your g/f didn't give them authority to take the payment.

powerfulone

Thanks exel for your post, I think at the moment we just need to leave it with the bank then and see if they can recover the money.

Customer_Street

I have been able to locate your file and have had now had the opportunity to listen to the sales call. I can advise that the payment was discussed and agreed to and we also provided you with the payment authorisation code after the transaction was made.

I can however advise you that in this instance as a gessture of goodwill we will be arranging for a refund on the package.

If there are any other concerns then please dont hesitate to contact me at ad@customerstreet.com.

Graham Armstrong
Accountability Manager

powerfulone

Jimmo,

Possibly we are the only one to kick up a fuss. Or the fact my login name resembles the company name in question. And the fact that both of us have called the company to complain. Good deduction skills by Customer Street to find out who we are.

Customer Street

Thanks for taking the time to look into this. We look forward to the reimbursement.

Cams

I have a big problem, they called me last week and I paid £575 for a packaged, I then changed my mind and requested a refund 2 Days after payment no one got back to me so I called again, they said that info about a refund will be in the welcome pack that I still haven't received in the post, but I got a copy in email, the welcome pack says nothing about refund, my cancellation, but on the normal t&c on the website says that customers are entitled to a refund during the set up period. I hope that all this waiting for the welcome pack has not caused them to set up and I can't get my refund, all the money that I saved would have gone down the drain and I wouldn't be able to afford the monthly payments, coz I only started my business up on 13th Oct 2008.

Any Advice, they keep prolonging the situation.I don't want a bloody website site and domains, I have 1 already.

HELP

maninthestreet

How do you go overdrawn on a credit card account???

born4thesurf

I have received a complaint via my BT Complaint website with reference to the company BT Customerstreet.

Here is the BT Customerstreet Complaint

Any help and advice you can give on this complaint would be greatly received.

Kind regards

Mark Shaw

ChrisSB

keep well clear of BT Customerstreet and representatives trying to get you to pay for inclusion through their UfindUs, MoreUK, SmileLocal and other sites. After registering my company for a free listing on their UfindUs website I was immediately phoned by one of their 'sales reps' (terrible sales pitch and seemed very badly trained) who tried to convince me to sign up there and then to their scam. When I said I wasn't interested (I have already got my company at the top of page 1 of Google, Yahoo, etc and don't need their help) he suggested that if I didn't, he'd contact my main competitor and offer them the deal. Nice way to build up trust and loyalty!!

I have since contacted BT (the proper one, not this Lancashire cowboy outfit that were recently bought by BT) and have an official complaint lodged. I'm glad that the BT Customerstreet 'Accountability Manager' has been trawling the forums trying to minimise the fallout from their amateurish activities. Whatever they offer you, make sure you get it in writing with the sales persons name. And don't agree to anything on the basis of one crazy phone call. There are better companys out there offering a much better service, or you can do the same yourself if you're prepared to do your homework.

Andrea_Lane

ChrisSB wrote: »

keep well clear of BT Customerstreet and representatives trying to get you to pay for inclusion through their UfindUs, MoreUK, SmileLocal and other sites. After registering my company for a free listing on their UfindUs website I was immediately phoned by one of their 'sales reps' (terrible sales pitch and seemed very badly trained) who tried to convince me to sign up there and then to their scam. When I said I wasn't interested (I have already got my company at the top of page 1 of Google, Yahoo, etc and don't need their help) he suggested that if I didn't, he'd contact my main competitor and offer them the deal. Nice way to build up trust and loyalty!!

I have since contacted BT (the proper one, not this Lancashire cowboy outfit that were recently bought by BT) and have an official complaint lodged. I'm glad that the BT Customerstreet 'Accountability Manager' has been trawling the forums trying to minimise the fallout from their amateurish activities. Whatever they offer you, make sure you get it in writing with the sales persons name. And don't agree to anything on the basis of one crazy phone call. There are better companys out there offering a much better service, or you can do the same yourself if you're prepared to do your homework.

Where can you make the official complaint? I signed up with them a fortnight ago after a 40 minute (at least) call. They cut the charges in half to £150 for joining up, and £30 per month as they said I was a start up business. At no time did they say it was excluding VAT. They also said that they wouldn't take the £30 until the end of March but when I checked my account £207 had been taken out which I worked back to find that's the £150 and £30 plus VAT.

I decided to cancel two days after getting the Direct Debit confirmation from Ufindus and before the 'welcome' pack from BT Customer Street (which incidently doesn't have any invoice or contract details only another form for an direct debit and instructions on how to log in to their site). I had checked various forums online and no one had a good thing to say about them. The professional forum for photographers I belong to all said they had never got any business at all through them.

When I cancelled I got an incident number emailed to me at the time of cancelling and they contacted me today but said I have no rights to cancel. I'm at my wits end. I feel an absolute idiot to have been taken in by them.

What can I do? Anything?

nocashatall2009

Suckered me too, I feel so stupid.

Cold called two weeks before Christmas 2008 on my (newly added to Yell.com) mobile number so of course I was going to answer it may of been a customer.

Hard, hard sell. Reduction after reduction after reduction on the price, got it down to £149.39, which I really needed for presents but with all those customers out there being able to see my services seemed worth it.

Was told or should I say lead to believe, the £149.39 was for first page Google listing and a website. Told to try it for 12 month, if I was not happy with the service and the amount of customers I could cancel and don't pay anything until next year.

Because it was so late in the year, rightly or wrongly I assumed that ment I'd paid for 12 months out of the £149.39 and after the 12 month, If I didn't want it any more I could then cancel or continue by paying £30 per month for the website.

Debit card payment paid immediate.
Received no contract or welcome pack explaining the terms.
Website went live in January before I had even seen it.

Shock horror when in January 2009 I found a Direct Debit Mandate set up on my Bank Account for regular payments of £30. I already had enough D/D's on that account I couldn't afford yet another, so no way on earth I would of agreed to that. The details I was asked for and what I supplied were for the Debit Card payment of £149.39 only.

I immediately cancelled the D/D and informed BT Customerstreet of this after seeing Blogs and forums from other customers complaining about them and the art work they had used in the making of their website without Reuters permission. Turned out the company who's name was on the website apparently became liable for fees and not the company BT Customerstreet that made it. I told them I wished to cancel. I was given a case number and it was arrange for someone to call me back.

SIMON at BT Customerstreet who called me after, informed me that I couldn't just cancel because I had changed my mind, only he could cancel the service contract and I had to continue to pay £30 per month under some business to business contract law.

I have refused to pay a penny for the last 6 months, they had a company called Black's Collections (PO Box 2113 Blackpool FY4 2XZ, check it out on google earth or maybe someone in Blackpool could go round and see what is there) send me a demand for £103.32, for three months unpaid fee's.


It would appear to be for a 'pay per click service' and dispite all the visits they claim have gone through them to their webpage in my company name, I have had ZERO WORK GENERATED FROM IT.

Why should I be expected to pay for a service that doesn't work?

For all I or anyone knows, they could be paying other people sat at home in front of their PC's and Laptops to repeatedly pay a visit to a list of website's on their books simply to generate a 'CLICK' for which they can charge £30 per month for!!!!???


Funny how I have had NO WORK COME IN FROM ANY CLICK FROM THEM, don't you think?

I have contacted the DTi through the Office Of Fair Trading, they sent me a format for a letter to reclaim my £149.39 under Breach of Contract, seeing has BT Customerstreet send me no contract or terms and set up a live website in my name before I had approved it.


I will keep you all Posted as to further out comes.