Maxwell, Turner & Associates, Inc. no apparent attempt to make collection Fresno, California

Does this sound familiar to anyone?

February 25, 2010

Received a phone call from Kim Young at Maxwell Turner & Associates offering to collect any bad debts I may have. She then sent a fax containing information about Maxwell, Turner & Associates, Inc. and a contract which I was requested to sign and return fax to them a.s.a.p. As my fax and phone lines are the same, I needed to disconnect the phone call in order to receive the fax. This gave me time to review the contract, and upon so doing I had some concerns. I called Kim and told her my concerns which appeared to confuse her, and someone named Frank came on the line. I explained that I was not overly interested in continuing with this process, but Frank said they would take up my concerns with their legal department, and almost immediately Kim sent me another contract with the item of my main concern blanked out. I then said I would prefer to have my attorney review the contract before I signed, and she appeared to be compliant. Upon review my attorney was concerned with two more paragraphs in the contract. Kim called me back on March 4 to find if my attorney had seen the contract. I told her we were mainly concerned about paragraph 3.5 of the contract, and Frank picked up the phone conversation to find out about my concern. When asked to remove the paragraph from the contract, he immediately said he would, and fax a new contract. Shortly I received a copy of the same contract with the paragraph crossed out and a minor handwritten change to another paragraph which I had requested. I then received another call from Frank to see if I had received the fax, and I told him I was concerned about another clause in the contract stating "handwritten alterations to this agreement will not be honored". He said that meant any alterations made by me, but did not mean alterations made by M T A. I then signed the contract and sent it back to them via fax with a copy of a statement to a client of mine which has been owed for approximately ten years.. The next day I received a phone call from Jason Stone with M T A stating he had contacted my client who had used foul language and said he was not going to pay! Jason also stated he had found that this client had $36000 in a bank account, so had no legitimate reason not to pay, and also had others to whom he owed money and was not paying as well because he was not satisfied with either their work or mine. Strangely, this client had not yet been previously sued by anyone. Jason then said that M T A was now going to sue my client for approximately three times the amount of my statement which amounted to in excess of $6000. During our conversation I was told that my client was calling Jason on another line, and Jason put me on hold for about 1 minutes, then returned to our call and said my client was just calling to further harass him. In order to sue my client I would need to give M T A a check for $612 up-front to cover costs to litigate my claim, and M T A would send me an affidavit I needed to sign so they could freeze the $36000 account of my client. This needed to be done yet that afternoon as my client had threatened he would move the money around to other accounts. This signing of the affidavit needed to be done a.s.a.p. and Jason would send it to me via fax and walk me through the process of completing the affidavit as soon as I received the fax. I then received the fax containing a simple affidavit and an apparent form letter to me containing information about the case and the amount for which they would sue my client. Jason called back and told me how I was to complete each item, pausing between each explanation and expecting me to fill in the blanks during our conversation. I was then to fax it back to him, and their legal team would notarize it. I also was to fax them a copy of a check for $612 which he was instructing me to complete as we talked, giving me a case number which was "very important" to include on the check. He then would have FedEx stop by and pick up the originals in the afternoon to deliver to M T A who would then file them with the court in order to legalize the frozen $36000 account. As it was Friday, I asked if FedEx could pick up the documents on Monday, and was told they would come between noon and 4 P.M. As I then needed to disconnect the call in order to send the fax (Jason seemed troubled that this needed to be done), I told him I also needed to do some checking prior to sending the fax. He said he would call me back in ten minutes. I then called the Chamber of Commerce in Fresno, CA to ask about M T A, and was told they had no record of this firm, and that they were not listed in the white pages, but gave me the phone number of the Better Business Bureau in the Fresno area. I then contacted someone in the Better Business Bureau and was told that M T A had a rating there of "F" which is the lowest rating they can give, and that M T A had six complaints against them already during their short existence, and were apparently making no attempt to resolve them. I called my attorney with my story and was advised to tell M T A that I was not expecting to make any out-of-pocket expenditure in the collection of this debt. I then sent a fax to M T A to this effect, and have not been contacted by them since.

It is now almost one year later, and I never heard from M T A again. I suppose since I did not send them any money, they discontinued me as a client without letting me know..