I am absolutely mortified at what has happened to me, same as newcat. My partner set up a company in January. Advertised in Yellow Pages in April and immediately was contacted by Advertising Agencies. One was Yellow Partnership. Unfortunately he signed up to this and took the 5% discount by paying with his credit card on 4th July. On 11th July I received a phone call from Strawberry Educational saying that they were sending an invoice to us for payment of the advert. My partner had received a call from them but did not agree to sign up and did not give them his credit card details. To my horror, I found out that £699.13 had been debited from his credit card by Strawberry Educational. We contacted the credit card company about Fraud and Trading Standards who directed me to this website. I read one blagg that mentioned to ask your bank to check for unsuspecting pending debits. I then checked the credit card again and to my horror MPH Direct Ltd. had taken £699.13 from the card! I rang them up and asked who the heck they were and they said that my partner had signed up with them and paid. I told them that he had not and that they had taken the money fraudently. I wrote to Strawberry Educational, MPH Direct and Yellow Partnership and asked / demanded that I receive my money back prior to court proceedings. They are guilt under S.75 of the consumer credit card, the data protection act and humanity. I have contacted the Information Commissioner who should be taking up this case. We are out of pocket by £1398.26. We are a small business and in the current climate are not doing wonderfully. We can't afford this, we have small children to feed. It just seems so so wrong that these companies can or would work like this and it takes a lot of heartache to try and pursue them like they have done to so many of you.
My solicitor has been great and if any of the three companies are reading this, I'll be after you shortly!
mortified at 4th Aug 2008, 01:03PM