Search For Talent, SFT Casting Talent Network ripoff scamming talent artisits San Francisco California

Search For Talent (SFT), a Casting Talent Network, Inc. company, is full of nothing but scam artists who are dishonest and distasteful. My finacee recently contacted them for information, he was notified that he would be charged $1.98 for a "packet" of information about the company and information about local casting calls for actors. He was then offered to sign up on thier website to create a profile and be able to post photos so he could network and recieve updates on future casting calls. He simply said he was not interested because he did not want to pay the monthly fee of $19.80.

We recieved the "information packet" a few weeks later. It only contained two peices of paper. The first page had a short congratilations letter on joining thier company. The second page consisted of only 5 casting calls (which 4 out of the 5 were passed the deadline). He did not qualify for any of the casting calls.

A couple weeks later we got our bank statment, we were charged the $1.98 , and 6 days later charged $19.80. My Fiancee called SFT and tried to complain but all they offered was one month free of thier internet service, after being fed up with them he hung up the phone and went online to try and cancell his account. He could not do so. So, he tried to call them, but was on hold for over 45 minutes. Once again they claimed they could not do anything.

The next day I decided to call, I asked to please refund the money and to cancel the internet account because we did not wish to be part of thier company anymore. After 30 minutes of being on hold and after about 5 minutes of a customer service rep with a bad attitude I was offered 2 free months I simply said no, he said there was nothing he could do and hung up on me. I tried several other times that day to get in contact with them and I could not.

The next day I called again telling them that they charged me for a month when I wished not to even have the website account. He tried to explain I could not be refunded the money.Stating that we already used a month fo the service (how can you use a month of service when you had only been signed up with the company for 10 days?) So I told him to just cancel the acocunt, he refused, became very rude, spoke with a nasty attitude, then started to raise his voice and eventually yelled at me claiming I was wrong. As to which I responded in an angry way by also yelling. He responded by hanging up on me.

After an hour later I finally got through to someone else who claimed we were using the web site wrong, I said I didn't care, just close the acocunt now. He continued to look up our account info to see what we had done, when then he replied "oohhh..you've been penalized with points taken away due to your past phone call where you profanly yelled at our customer service rep. so we can't cancel your account because it is up to him and he does not like you, so unless you call him up and appologize we can not do anything" at this point I became frustrated again when I told him the only person I have to comply with to cancel my account is me or my fiancee. We are the ones paying for it (although we never agreed to) so there for we are the ones who can cancel it at anytime and we don't have to go through a specific customer service rep. to do so. After about 15 minutes of him also arguing and having a nasty attitude with me he fianlly agreed to allegedly cancel the acount. Although after 5 attempts in 4 days, I'm skeptical to belive them.

Stephanie
Glen Ellyn, Illinois
U.S.A.