phonepower.com Unethical Billing Practices Internet

    Watch out for this companies UNETHICAL service agreement! They make you agree to pay a dispute fee if you ever dispute one of their charges. What this means is if you dispute the charge with Visa or your bank, no matter which way the bank rules, they are still going to add a charge to your account.

    I disputed a charge and the bank ruled in my favor which should be the end of it. Not so with this company. They generate a "dispute" charge on your account and send you a bill. If you don't pay the bill then they generate an additional "collection fee" to your account. When you call them for an explanation they only response is "if you don't pay it we are going to report it to the collection agencies."

    After much argument they stated that they would wave the collection fee if I would pay the dispute fee. WHAT A CROCK OF MANURE!!! What choice do you have? Either pay their "dispute fee" or risk them trashing your credit with a collection record. I normally never would have paid this charge because of principle but I was forced to pay it to avoid a potential hit on my credit and only because I decided it would be cheaper than having to spend time and effort resolving it some other way. By the way my balance was ZERO except for their bogus "dispute charge" and "collection charge!"

    I doubt seriously if the credit card companies are aware of such unethical charges since the whole dispute process is to protect the consumer. Avoid any company that participates in such unethical practices and then leverages you by threatening to report a collection on your credit bureau.