Consumer complaint received 2022-10-04
Company: Atlanticus Services Corporation
State: FL
Product: Debt collection
Sub-product: Credit card debt
Issue: Took or threatened to take negative or legal action
Sub-issue: Threatened or suggested your credit would be damaged

Complaint:
As a result of this illegal ( see further down ) door to door sales I was fooled into a contract with a home security system XXXX XXXX XXXX ( XXXX, Utah ) Since XX/XX/XXXX at which I pay monthly for monitoring services. Upon a more diligent investigation as I began to question the conception of this contracted service and the companys reputation that I knew nothing about. The sales person named XXXX who stated that he was originally from Alabama assured me to always be available to contact for any reason. He further assured me that if after this agreement was effected and I had any concerns to please contact him and he would resolve any matter what so ever if one arose. 
I expressed my skepticism in that regard about this possibly being so only as long as he was with this company/XXXX. He ( this salesperson ) assured me that he had been wit this company for a very long time and wasnt going anywhere any time soon. This proved to be untrue later. Meanwhile, I was comforted in believing that if I at-least tried this agreement for several months to a year and if I decided that I did not want to continue the service I was free to cancel at any time without consequence. He explained that a worse case scenario, the equipment would need to be given back and the relationship could end without any negative consequence. 
After learning that the associated creditor FORTIVA XXXXwhich facilitated the means for the this agreement abusively reported a late or missed payment to my Credit Report likely in an effort to extract additional fees such as late fees by disregarding or taking advantage of some means by which an inadvertent technical error occurred in automatic payments upon which I relied to avoid any such human related error-I attempted to correct this problem with negative results. I made further payments in good faith while trying to repair this damage to my Credit Standing while FORTIVA attempted to extract more late fees from me and holding my credit worthiness as leverage or even blackmail possibly. I now suffered the burden of trying to repair my credit score because of this relationship. Upon attempting to communicate with FORTIVA further about this matter, I requested that they furnish me a copy of any such NOTE or retail service agreement or such contract. They have not to date. 

I called and spoke to XXXX about this on XXXX XXXX, XXXX and explained my situation to him. During the conversation I learned that he had indeed moved on and now working at a different company. He indeed explained to me that Corporate refering back to XXXX teaches him what to say in order to effect a deal. This is consistent with several complaints about this company made by several other consumers and documented in lawsuits against this company. 
The conversation ended with him promising me to have the regional manager call me back to address my problem and concerns. This regional Manager never called me. I then learned that XXXX on this particular day in which this agreement occurred did not register with the City ( City of XXXX ) in order to legally conduct door to door solicitations. Therefore, the conception of this agreement/contract is defective to begin with. 

In order to obtain the equipment used for this service, I was compelled to use their affiliated creditor Fortiva which provided a line of credit for a sum of just over/about {$3000.00} for the equipment. On this particular day, my option to decide to cancel was also impacted as that my 3 days cooling off period allowed by Florida law was disrupted and not remedied. It took more than one day to install the equipment in order for the service to be activated. The individual working to install the equipment remained in my home over for an inordinate time. This required me to be present restricting my activities or ability to tend to other personal matters. No remedy was provided or made apparent to me. 

Upon attempting to cancel the service, my effort was circumvented by XXXX representatives over a recorded phone call. They explained that I could only cancel upon fully purchasing the equipment and furnishing such proof to XXXX. On another instance this condition was further complicated when I called yet again trying to get better help in order to cancel this service as was supposedly in my right. 
I was then told on the second time that I now had to purchase fifty percent of the remaining contract as well as provide proof that the equipment was fully purchased before I could effectively cancel this service. I was never provided the correct instructions on how to cancel this contract by XXXX representatives, showing a clear effort to take advantage of a consumer 's ignorance of their rights and to retain such source of income at the expense of consumer rights and other legal parameters. 
I requested for any and all documents including any NOTE related to this entire contract and never received such after providing my proper email address and having been promised to be supplied. I then indeed found the service contract which made no such mention of these cancellation conditions and I thereby forwarded a notice of cancellation in writing by certified mail which was received by XXXX on XX/XX/XXXX. 
The conditions of cancellation as per the contract required 30 days notice. XXXX charged my bank account XX/XX/XXXX for the usual amount as previous months and as it appears, after receiving my notice of cancellation on XX/XX/XXXX -they hastily charged me yet again XX/XX/XXXX. Today XX/XX/XXXX I called my banking institution to ensure that XXXX does not continue to unjustly charge my account while disregarding my notice of cancellation. As incredible as this seems, the banking representative who I spoke to today about this matter expressed to me that she too had this same experience with XXXX and expressed her very negative opinion after her personal experience with this company. She affirmed to me that it indeed was a good idea to cancel the autopay set up pertaining to XXXX because they ( XXXX ) is indeed known to charge anyway and leave one with the burden of trying to correct their mischief. 
XXXX has charged me twice in the same month having acted yet again in bad faith. XXXX and FORTIVA are joint conspirators in this abuse and are engaged in the same effort to corner a consumer and destroy Credit Standing in order to insure a source of income which originated through deception, embellishment and misrepresentation of a contract terms and general customer service as well as skirting consumer rights. FORTIVA under these circumstances has leveraged a consumers Credit Standing in order to strongarm unwilling participation.

Company public response: Company believes it acted appropriately as authorized by contract or law
Company response to consumer: Closed with explanation