Ripoff Report Needs Your Help!
X  |  CLOSE
Report: #865117

Complaint Review: Account Services - AGOURA California

  • Submitted:
  • Updated:
  • Reported By: StJohn — Biloxi Mississippi United States of America
  • Author Not Confirmed What's this?
  • Why?
  • Account Services 3230 CORNELL RD AGOURA, California United States of America

Show customers why they should trust your business over your competitors...

Is this
Report about YOU
listed on other sites?
Those sites steal
Ripoff Report's
content.
We can get those
removed for you!
Find out more here.
How to fix
Ripoff Report
If your business is
willing to make a
commitment to
customer satisfaction
Click here now..

A Recorded call again.  I Pushed 1, and Scott answered.  He hung up when I asked him for information.  I am now getting one call each day from these people.  I have requested them to stop calling but they call anyway.  What can be done to stop these annoying calls?
  
 Here s what I found out with a little research:
Hans J Smit Duyzentkunst:
This idiot is behind a boatload of spamming and bogus phone calls utilizing many different phone numbers that have been spoofed. Google this phone number to see all the negative comments: 303-249-9700

Here is the newspaper article from the Los Angeles Times on June 11, 2010:

Agoura Hills firm accused of making illegal telemarketing calls is shut down, FTC says

June 11, 2010|By Kristena Hansen, Los Angeles Times

An Agoura Hills company accused of making tens of millions of illegal telemarketing calls selling worthless auto warranties and credit card interest rate reduction programs has been shut down, the Federal Trade Commission said Thursday.

The owner of the company is Hans J Smit Duyzentkunst.  His phone number is  818-879-9994.

A federal judge in Chicago issued a temporary restraining order against SBN Peripherals Inc. following a complaint made by the FTC. It accused the company of violating a number of its telemarketing rules, such as making unsolicited recorded telemarketing calls also known as robocalls to consumers who have not given their written consent to do so and to those listed on the national Do Not Call Registry.

Here is the company information from the California Secretary of State:

Entity Name:    SBN PERIPHERALS, INC.
Entity Number:    C1807672
Date Filed:    04/16/1992
Status:    ACTIVE
Jurisdiction:    CALIFORNIA
Entity Address:    3230 CORNELL RD
Entity City, State, Zip:    AGOURA CA 91301
Agent for Service of Process:    J H SMIT DUYZENTKUNST
Agent Address:    3230 CORNELL RD
Agent City, State, Zip:    AGOURA CA 91301

*********************************************************
HERE IS THE FTC ORDER, DATED  March 28, 2012 :

FTC Action Puts Robocallers Out of the Telemarketing Business
Defendants Allegedly Responsible for Billions of Calls; Will Give Up Assets Totaling Roughly $3 Million

The Federal Trade Commission put a robocall operation out of the telemarketing business under a settlement resolving FTC charges that it bombarded consumers with more than two billion calls pitching a variety of products and services, including worthless extended auto warranties and credit card interest rate-reduction programs.

The final settlement order against SBN Peripherals, based near Los Angeles, which did business as Asia Pacific Telecom Inc., is part of the FTC's ongoing crackdown on deceptive robocallers. The order bans the defendants from telemarketing and requires them to give up roughly $3 million in assets.

The FTC's complaint alleged that the defendants delivered illegal prerecorded phone calls falsely claiming the caller had urgent information about the consumer's auto warranty or credit card interest rate. Consumers who pressed "1" for more information were transferred to telemarketers who used fraudulent practices to sell inferior extended auto service contracts or worthless debt-reduction services. According to court papers filed by the court-appointed receiver, from January 2008 through August 2009, the defendants completed approximately 2.6 billion outbound robocalls that were answered by approximately 1.6 billion consumers, approximately 12.8 million of whom were connected to a sales agent.

As alleged in the complaint, the defendants violated the law by using robocalls to contact consumers without their written permission and called telephones listed on the National Do Not Call Registry. To make it difficult for consumers to identify the seller, the FTC also alleged that the defendants' robocalls often transmitted caller ID information vaguely identifying the caller as "SALES DEPT" and displaying telephone numbers registered to an offshore company it controlled called Asia Pacific Telecom.

Under the proposed settlement order, Repo B.V.; SBN Peripherals Inc., doing business as SBN Dials; Johan Hendrik Smit Duyzentkunst; and Janneke Bakker-Smit Duyzentkunst are banned from telemarketing. The order also prohibits them from misrepresenting any good or service, and from selling or otherwise benefitting from customers' personal information, and requires them to properly dispose of customers' personal information within 30 days. The order imposes a $5.3 million judgment that will be suspended, based on their inability to pay, when they have surrendered assets valued at approximately $3 million, including more than $1 million obtained from a bank account in Hong Kong, a $375,000 lien on a home, a 50 percent interest in an office building in Saipan, the defendants' interest in seven parcels of undeveloped land, as well as three cars and a recreational vehicle. The full judgment will become due immediately if the defendants are found to have misrepresented their financial condition.

The Commission vote approving the proposed consent order was 4-0. It is subject to court approval. The FTC filed the proposed consent order in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois, Eastern Division.

To hear telemarketing sales pitches used in this case, click Auto Warranty audio 1, Auto Warranty audio 2, Credit Card audio 1, and Credit Card audio 2.

To learn more about telemarketing scams, read Who's Calling? Recognize and Report Phone Fraud, You Make the Call: The FTC's Telemarketing Sales Rule, and the FTC's new consumer alert, Robocalls are Illegal: Scammers Use False Caller IDs to Hide. The FTC also offers How to Steer Clear of Auto Warranty Scams and Credit Card Interest Rate Reduction Scams. To inform business owners, the FTC offers Reining in Robocalls and Complying with the Telemarketing Sales Rule.

NOTE: This consent order is for settlement purposes only and does not constitute an admission by the defendants that the law has been violated. Consent orders have the force of law when approved and signed by the District Court judge.

The Federal Trade Commission works for consumers to prevent fraudulent, deceptive, and unfair business practices and to provide information to help spot, stop, and avoid them. To file a complaint in English or Spanish, visit the FTC's online Complaint Assistant or call 1-877-FTC-HELP (1-877-382-4357). The FTC enters complaints into Consumer Sentinel, a secure, online database available to more than 2,000 civil and criminal law enforcement agencies in the U.S. and abroad. The FTC's website provides free information on a variety of consumer topics. Like the FTC on Facebook and follow us on Twitter.

MEDIA CONTACT:
  Frank Dorman
  Office of Public Affairs
  202-326-2674
STAFF CONTACT:
  Steven M. Wernikoff
  FTC's Midwest Region
  312-960-5634

(Asia-Pacific Telecom)
(FTC File No. X100035)
Caller: Johan Hendrik Smit Duyzentkunst
Call Type: Telemarketer
Caller: Hans J Smit Duyzentkunst
Call Type: Telemarketer
 

This report was posted on Ripoff Report on 04/06/2012 10:25 PM and is a permanent record located here: https://www.ripoffreport.com/reports/account-services/agoura-california-91301/account-services-sbn-peripherals-robo-calls-daily-refuses-to-stop-calling-agoura-califor-865117. The posting time indicated is Arizona local time. Arizona does not observe daylight savings so the post time may be Mountain or Pacific depending on the time of year. Ripoff Report has an exclusive license to this report. It may not be copied without the written permission of Ripoff Report. READ: Foreign websites steal our content

Search for additional reports

If you would like to see more Rip-off Reports on this company/individual, search here:

Report & Rebuttal
Respond to this report!
What's this?
Also a victim?
What's this?
Repair Your Reputation!
What's this?

Updates & Rebuttals

REBUTTALS & REPLIES:
2Author
2Consumer
2Employee/Owner

#6 REBUTTAL Individual responds

This thing just won't go away...:)

AUTHOR: Hans Smit - (United States of America)

POSTED: Sunday, August 19, 2012

You are a very clever detective!

However... you are also major stupid.

SBN no longer exists as a active company, and I am unemployed like a few others in the US.

If SBN does anything, it is  done by Robb Evans and associates (the court appointed receiver)

If you read all of the FTC stuff you would know we were permanently shut down by the FTC / receiver on June 2 2010. ( our systems stopped working that day around 10am pst)

My statement was  (and is today) we never made any of these calls, and we were never involved in running a telemarketing operation.

We were a service provider, and we had many customers, and some were telemarketers yes.

The calls went though our servers..yes but we did not control any of those calls, other than making sure the servers worked.

Our customers had full controll of their own accounts and projects, we did not involve ourselves in their bizz, kind of like the email provider  who had a spammer for a customer.

If you read the settlement signed by the judge  in march of this year you will see a permanent ban on me being involved with any telemarketing. Do you think I would be stupid enough to violate a court order??

We tried to keep our customers respectfull of the law  (I am sure this is where you want to put a hateful remark and that is ok).  However... since we were killed consumer complaints (and on the SAME  CALLS ) have risen 500% (data  reported by the FTC themselves)

My position is that this was caused by others  realizing that trying to keep down consumer grief by scrubbing and  doing removal and other things do not help 1 bit once the ftc shows up.

They do not care about what you did right, they only care about what you did wrong, and so the better choice is to simply throw all the rules out the window and hide.

This is what our former customers are doing.(they were and are the source of the calls)

You will not agree (and that is you right) , but my opinion is that the increased harrasment of consumers, and the fact that it is now impossible to stop it, is a unintended (?) side effect of the FTC cracking down on service providers and  caller ID companies.  

So.... 5x as many consumer complaints, means job and budget security and  growth for the FTC workers and the politically appointed comissiones have numbers to waive and ask for more budget.

Life is good when you are a civil servant I guess.

You screw it up and you get more money to .. you guess.

What is happening today is clear evidence that we were not the ones doing this, and teh FTC certainly has not stopped it despite more budget.

As for others being sued.. I know many people in the industry, but a assumption that I woul dhave anything to do with that is unfounded.

Call the FTC if you do not believe me...  312-960-5630 Steve Wernikoff or  312-960-5634 Jim Davis.

PS the FTC was helpful to all telemarketers by posting the Rachel prompt on their website (you can download it there), so anyone could download it and use it in their marketing campaign. I would call that aiding and abetting.

Respond to this report!
What's this?

#5 Consumer Comment

Come-on Hans! What about Roy M Cox and GenuTec?

AUTHOR: ThePrizeVan - (USA)

POSTED: Sunday, August 19, 2012

This link shows you as a GenuTec board member with Roy M. Cox who also has been sued by the FTC.

http://investing.businessweek.com/research/st ... vcapId=23957705


http://www.ftc.gov/os/caselist/0923193/index.shtm

And now-

Missouri sues Randy Cox Jr. and Castle Rock Capital Management out of California. 

 

http://www.legalnewsline.com/news/236974-koster-sues-five-companies-over-calls

Koster filed the lawsuit against Marketing Strategy Group of Hungary, Transfers Argentina SA of Argentina, Capital Solutions Group SA, Castle Rock Management SA, Castle Rock Capital Management and Randy Cox, Jr., a Calif. resident who is the owner of the five corporations.

One source indicates that Roy Michael Cox may also be using Randy Cox as a possible alias name.

http://www.veromi.com/Search.aspx?sType=name&db=&fn=Roy&mn=M&ln=Cox&city=&state=CA&dobmm=&dobdd=&doby=&Age=

Respond to this report!
What's this?

#4 Author of original report

Fined for no-call violations at last!

AUTHOR: StJohn - (United States of America)

POSTED: Thursday, May 10, 2012

State fines firm

$945,000 for no-call violations

Fine is largest Mississippi has ever issued to a telemarketer

JACKSON Mississippi,



-- Not only are those telemarketing robocalls from card services annoying, theyre also illegal, especially if youve signed up for a federal or state do not call list.

Mississippi...utility regulators Tuesday fined a California telemarketer $945,000, in an effort to get such calls to stop. Its the largest fine that the Mississippi Public Service Commission has ever issued against a telemarketer.

The order was issued against Roy M. Cox Jr. of Santa Ana, Calif., and five companies he controls. The commission said Cox broke Mississippis law against unwanted telephone solicitations 189 times in the last four years.

Northern District Commissioner Brandon Presley said in February that Cox was operating possibly the largest telemarketing scam to hit Mississippi since the auto warranty scam a few years ago.             

Cox and associated companies also face a civil suit filed by the Federal Trade  Commission last year in California. A lawyer representing Cox in the federal case did not immediately respond to phone and email messages Tuesday. The Mississippi fine was assessed after Cox failed to respond to legal papers served on him by the state. Mississippi assessed the maximum fine of $5,000 for each legal violation that it documented.   Go find that check, Southern District Commissioner Leonard Bentz said after the

commission voted. Under state and federal law, people who dont want to get telephone solicitations

sign up for a do not call list.

Telephone solicitors are supposed to acquire that list and not call those people, with certain exemptions.  The state says Cox and his companies failed to register before starting   business in Mississippi, didnt buy a copy of the states do not call list, were placing illegal robocalls, and were calling outside the time window allowed under state law.  The companies were also illegally hiding their names on caller ID, instead listing  themselves as card services, credit services, or private office,  according to the federal case. The state complaint says Cox operates through a web of companies, including California-based Castle Rock Capital Management as well as Castle Rock  mnagement SA and Capital Solutions Group SA, both of Panama, as well as Transfers Argentina SA of Argentina and Marketing Strategy Group of Hungary.

The federal complaint also says that Cox worked through a Seychelles company called Public Service. It isnt named in the Mississippi order. Federal authorities said Coxs companies sell credit card interest rate reduction programs, extended automobile warranties and home security systems. The federal suit was filed by the FTC in partnership with the Justice Department, which could allow the government to seek civil penalties of $16,000 per violation if it wins. In response to the federal lawsuit, a lawyer for Cox denied that he was a telemarketer, had  brooken the law, or controlled the foreign companies. Cox can appeal the Mississippi fine to Hinds  county Chancery Court. Jeff Jernigan, a staff attorney for the Mississippi Public Service Commission, said the state could try to collect the judgment by filing liens on houses Cox owns in California and Tennessee.  The commission is still working on collecting its previous largest fine, the $490,000 that it fined Joel Katz of Baltimore last fall. Katz was convicted in federal court in 2002 for defrauding 16,000 people out of more than $1.6 million. Mississippi officials said he went back to his old ways while still on probation.

Bentz said the commission would love to have some more authority from the Legislature to collect these fines. He also said hed like to see a law allowing jail terms for unauthorized telemarketers.

A bill failed in the Legislature this year that would have also outlawed solicitation by fax and text message and would have added paid solicitors for charities to the list of people forbidden to call.



Respond to this report!
What's this?

#3 Author of original report

Account Services a pain in the Neck!

AUTHOR: StJohn - (United States of America)

POSTED: Saturday, April 14, 2012

I am the person who wrote the origional complaint.  I am now getting 3 calls each day from this phone number and I do not have a credit card.  If you lost your company and are now destitute, then so be it.  I want to be left alone by telemarketers. 

You provided the means for someone to send out these calls and now you call foul, that it is not your fault. But did you try to prevent your costomers from illegial activity? Did you report these companies to the authorities? Did you cut off their services? Did you even monitor their activities or how they used your services? 

Three calls each day is certainly too much.  One each day is too much. All I want is for these people to stop and leave me alone.

As for your losing your job, maybe now you will have time to go out and get an honest job  like the rest of us.

Respond to this report!
What's this?

#2 Consumer Comment

huh?

AUTHOR: Neva - (U.S.A.)

POSTED: Saturday, April 14, 2012

So if I understand this correctly, you are claiming that though your company did make annoying calls, you were busted.  And as a result of being busted, you began fighting the FTC to once again have your company begin to make those annoying calls.  But you argue making those annoying calls is better for the consumer than radio, tv, and direct mail. 

Either way, you had a extremely annoying company that I am glad is out of business.

Respond to this report!
What's this?

#1 REBUTTAL Owner of company

How wrong could posts on this site be?

AUTHOR: Hans Smit - (United States of America)

POSTED: Saturday, April 14, 2012

The annonymous person posting here calls me an "idiot" ( I support free speech, so that is ok) but in the process of posting he/she is actually showing limited rational thinking him/her self. 

He is also mis-representing the information by casually tieing us to things we have nothing to do with.

 Understandably people are seriously frustrated by the enormous amounts of telemarketing calls they are getting daily, and how they are unable to stop them more than ever before. Some of these angry consumers become "detectives" and "activists"  deriving some form of personal satisfaction from exposing those that supposedly make these calls, pointing to any appointed bad guy makes them feel good I guess. In this case people simply do not read or do not understand what it means if the federal government takes down a  company, or what the logical implications of those actions are.

Our company was a  internet based  telecommunication service provider ( there are many such companies) and we provided people / companies / government / politicians that wanted to do message delivery, or notification or surveys or telemarketing in various forms with a intergrated solution. We saw ourselves as the ISP of  message delivery,  no more than the vehicle to perform a service (like internet service providers, or newspaper or radio or tv which are all services). Through our service customers could  upload lists of numbers to call, and  voice prompts ( the message to be delivered ) and controll all aspects of a telecom marketing campaign through a browser.We had about 300 customers using this service and tehy all signed " voice broadcast agreements" stating they would not be violating the law, an dthey would be responsible if they did. We had  politicians  use our service ( Obama campaign, Bush , various DA's and many local and state politicians and other election services like political surveys ) We also had emergency notification customers ( our systems called  400000 people in a few hours when Katrina was about to hit warning people in low lareas to leave ) We had  fortune 500 companies (or their marketing arms) use our services to provide their sales floor with inbound leads, and we had  various resellers and  telemarketing firms who bought our integrated access service. When you have that many customers there are always a few bad apples, and we alledgedly had some also.

The ftc tracked a significant number of  complaints about some of our customers and decided they wanted to try a new approach: take down the people that provide services to the people doing telemarketing instead of individually attacking the many small marketing rooms. And so they prepared a lawsuit against us under seal, based on the supposed wrong-doing by our customers , and they tracked down all of our assets before they attacked.  It was easy to find us, since we were not hiding anything, since we believed we were following the law. On june 2 2010 the receiver ( who is currently in control of SBN Inc )  took down all our infrastructure and seized all our corporate documents (including ALL customer information), while a court order froze all of our bank accounts and other assets before we were even served with the lawsuit.

We were being accused of "aiding and abetting" fraudulent telemarketers.

This means that as of June 2  2010 not a single call was made by anyone through our service, and we have been spending 100% of our energy fighting with the ftc, which ended up not being much of a fight, because the ftc controlled our money (and decided when and if our attorney would get paid...) making us effectively powerless. After 18 month of this we simply had to lay down our heads and  settle (without any admission of guilt) and hand over everything we ever earned from any activity ever to the ftc, leaving us with lots of debt and no way to pay it, so effectively we are bankrupt. (I am sure you are all cheering right now! )

What was the effect of this ftc action against service provider SBN for the consumer ?   

We were known in the industry as a service provider that aimed to follow the rules to the best of our abilities. for example we actually had WORKING removal servers that REALLY REMOVED numbers from our customers call lists if people called back the caller id's displayed.  We were also very much discouraging our customers from calling cell phones (blocking acces to tehm by default) , and made sure our customers lists were scrubbed against the federal DNC unless they had written opt in numbers.When the ftc took us down it caused a big uproar in the dialing industry ( exactly what the ftc hoped for I am sure) but it did not have the result the ftc was looking for....or maybe it did. Telemarketers, and especially those who were not following the rules , simply said:  trying to live by the rules obviously does not help at all in the end, see what happened to SBN.

So they stopped caring about things like not calling cell phones or respecting the federal dnc or doing any form of  removal when people asked not to be called.After June 2010 nationwide complaints MORE THAN DOUBLED over complaints in 2009, showing a massive disrespect by telemarketers for any law, because it was clear that none of that made a difference once the ftc knocks.  Going offshore , using voip and prepaid cell phones in call centers became popular ways to hide.

The unintended result of a government action??  maybe not...

In 2011 the ftc decided to go after caller id providers (the number showing on a marketing call) leading to marketers  abandoning numbers that pointed to working removal gateways, and massively starting to use non-existing numbers or numbers belonging to others....

This effectivly made it even much harder for consumers to call back anyone or and be removed from call lists.

Another unitended ??? result of the ftc's actions, making the telemarketing pain for consumers worse....

So, now we are personally broke and tired, without income and ready to file chapter 7  ( you all cheer again!)

But the consumer is worse off than ever before, despite many more tax dollars being spend on the ftc...

People trying to find those who are actually making these calls point at us...because ???????  The logic eludes me.My response is and always has been : we were not the ones making the calls in 2010, and we certainly are not the ones making ANY calls  (legal or otherwise) since 2010.

The only way to stop this (in my personal opinion) is to follow the money generated by for example Rachel upstream...to those who buy the leads from the many Rachel call centers, and it should be easy to trace that money (it might even lead to a fortune 500).

However..if you did that it might stop the complaints, and no complaints means less political support for more ftc budget...

I feel bad for all consumers being victims of any scam, and there are LOTS , and they are not limited to telemarketers.

The same people using telemarketing advertise by direct mail ( that is supposedly ok ), radio (that is supposeldy ok) , newspapers (that is supposedly ok) and television (that is supposedly ok also).

There are thousands of scams that are actually acceptable and legal because lobbyists shared the wealth. Many actions by the ftc actually increased suffering  by the consumers.

The (political appointed) ftc commisioners are firmly convinced they are doing the right thing for the consumers.

are you?

Jon Leibowitz FTC Chairman Phone: 202-326-3400 Email: jleibowitz@ftc.gov or jyoung2@ftc.gov

Phone: 202-326-3400 Julie Brill FTC CommissionerEmail: jbrill@ftc.govPhone: 303-326-2054 Edith Ramirez FTC CommissionerEmail: eramirez@ftc.govPhone: 202-326-2856 J. Thomas Rosch FTC CommissionerPhone: 202-326-3651

Respond to this report!
What's this?
Featured Reports

Advertisers above have met our
strict standards for business conduct.

X
What do hackers,
questionable attorneys and
fake court orders have in common?
...Dishonest Reputation Management Investigates Reputation Repair
Free speech rights compromised

WATCH News
Segment Now