Consumer complaint received 2020-09-10
Company: Diversified Adjustment Service, Inc.
State: CA
Product: Debt collection
Sub-product: Other debt
Issue: Attempts to collect debt not owed
Sub-issue: Debt is not yours

Complaint:
My adult daughter went in to a XXXX store in XXXX XXXX, CA to set up new phone service and purchase a new XXXX. She met with the sales person, stated that she wanted a new phone on her own account, and presented them with photo ID which they scanned. XXXX acknowledges this and has a copy of her ID on file. The sales person proceeded to give her a new IPhone and contract, in my name. My daughter did not realize this, and thought she had set up her own account and leased this phone and signed her own name using her own photo ID to do so. XXXX has acknowledged that nobody had authorization to purchase or sign contracts on my account except for me. They also, again, acknowledged that I was not present, and that the sales person did not have any authorization to put any purchase or contract on my account. After several phone calls, we both went to the XXXX store looking for the employee who did this and were told he didn't work there anymore. I asked for a manager and they said he wasn't there but would call me. I tried the store again repeatedly and they would take no action to rectify this and stated that she must have known my password. Which still would not be authorization to use the account. XXXX has repeatedly promised to rectify this. At one point, a customer service person told me that if I would pay a balance on the account they would be able to immediately switch the account into the correct name and out of my name. Upon this promise, I agreed and paid {$130.00} even though, again, it had been acknowledged that this was not my debt. This went on for nearly 2 years with XXXX. I also had a lengthy conversation with them about making sure this nonsense would never negatively affect my credit, because again, I did not authrorize purchase, contract or use of my name or account and this was XXXX 's mistake. The person assured me that this would never happen as there was an open case and they would never send this to collections. They never rectified this, as a matter of fact they opened another new account in my daughters name to transfer her contract for this phone and service into, and then proceeded to charge her for 2 accounts and continued to charge me for this account ( yes believe it or not that is 3 accounts now that they were billing for! ) My daughter called to pay off this account about 6 months ago and was assured that she was paying off the account that was mistakenly in my name and they applied the money to the 2 accounts in her name and closed them, and then proceeded to send me to collections. Again, all of this is ( supposedly ) on record and in notes with XXXX, because every time I would call them, I would say please read the notes on this account before I waste any time trying to explain, and every time they would say " Oh my goodness, let me help you straighten this mess out '' or something to that affect when they saw the mess and hundreds of phone calls. Now this account has been referred to XXXX XXXX XXXX and has ballooned to {$570.00}, and shows a collection on my credit report. I finally last week called and offered to pay them money to remove it from my credit ( basically extortion money ). They agreed to 30 % reduction and deletion. But, they refuse to put that in writing. So, I'm actually willing to pay a debt that I do not owe just to clean up my credit now, but only with assurances in writing for the deletion. With nothing in writing I have no recourse and don't believe they will follow through.

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