Answering Specialists Does Not Do What They Promise, Then They Do Not Allow You To Cancel Bonner Ferry Idaho

I used them years ago, with no complaints, then I signed up a month and a half ago and I believe they are now running a scam.

I signed up for a basic phone answering service and paid to have everything expedited. They made sure to collect payment as they should and that I signed their agreement. 

I had planned on investing monthly advertising on Google and these folks where going to take the calls, so when I neared completion of setting everything up I decided to do some test calls to my new number. I called at different times one night from 2 different numbers multiple times and no answer... They claim to answer phones 24 / 7. So the next morning I called my new number of 1 week again (and it took 3 calls to get an answer) and I let the lady on the phone know that I have been trying to call last night and earlier with no one answering the phone, so she transferred me to their so-called "customer service department" where I was told that what I was saying was not the case, she looked up the calls and she says that they were answered.... and in fact, they were not, she offered no acknowledgement of the issue or any other solution to the problem that I guess she thought was not real.

So, after a confusing conversation and a little thought I decided that this service was not going to be responsible for handling the calls that I am paying for. So, I hired another company to take the calls of the leads (answerforce.com who do a great job and really care about what they do, it is like night and day dealing with them) and got busy and really didn't think about Answering Specialists for about a month.

I was contacted a couple weeks later and told they were unable to send emails to me for some reason...

Anyway, that takes me to today, as an errand I was going to cancel their service and as a contractor I pulled into the driveway of an empty home I was working at and thought I'll call and cancel it should only take a minute... Well I was on the phone for over 4 hours and still have not gotten my service canceled.

I called with a simple request, cancel my service. I had no idea when they billed me and I didn't really care, I was not asking for money back only to cancel my service. Just like the first "customer service" call I was "greeted" by an apathetic clearly overachiever on the other end of the phone who said simply put it in writing and hung up.

At this point alarms went off and I realized what kind of company I was working with, they have obviously abandoned any thought of running a legitimate business who serves it customers who willingly hand over money for a service with value. Instead they are a shell of what they used to aspire to be and are just in it until they can't pay the electric bill anymore. 

So, I call back a lot... I get people who are obviously used to having customers try and cancel and they do their best to give the run around, and I assume the master strategy here is to squeeze that extra $42 out of every credit card they have and don't care how much time it takes the unpaid low skill folks on the phones to take the heat. I can tell management has no vision for their employer, again only wasting their lives until the lights get turned off.

After they block my number I call my credit card company who blocked any future charges and the pending charge will be disputed as soon as it goes though in a day or so. And they call Answering Specialists, and inform me that they will be calling me back. As what appeared to be a well-practiced juvenile tactic the call I received from them was only a hold message, yes that is correct when they call you back as per the guidelines of their payment processing agreement they only play a hold message, I assume so they can substantiate a call back... 

Anyway, after this awesome experience I call them from multiple other numbers with the same simple request, to cancel my account, with no luck again. I email a cancelation request to the email they site and to their form on their front-end website. And I get the response about how I have to format my cancelation request, and in their service agreement I see no required format to cancel...

So now I have spent over 4 hours on the phone, called my credit card to block them, written several reviews online to hopefully discourage others from wasting money and most importantly their time on this has been organization. And I am here writing this review, when all it would have taken is a simple act to cancel my account. I used Answering Specialists I think nearly 8 years ago, and they were great, I was deployed to Iraq with the Army so I canceled back then and don't remember anything negative about the cancelation then, and through a number of cell phones I managed to purposefully save their number because I had such a good impression of their service, only to be let down by their lack of ability to run a legitimate business.

I see that Tim Harlan spends the companies less than well earned money on Birds Eye at reviews.birdeye.com/answering-specialists-inc-205596312 where they have 36 total reviews and a whopping 2.0 average... Way to allocate the funds fella, I am uniquely positioned to understand the impact of a bad online reputation for a little business like this one because I created RevuCue.com and had actually talked months ago to Oleg about possibly replacing 62 Philippino sales, and customer service agents with their service since I had such a good experience with them in the past, good thing I didn't! 

Spending your money within the US is preferred but throwing your money away to scam like this is a waste. I only hope my words save someone else the time I have wasted on these folks and their pitiful offering.

As I close this complaint it is needed to be noted that I still do not know if my account is canceled and I wonder how long and to what extents they will go to keep a grasp on my next $42... lol what a joke, a disgrace to American capitalism and a waste of time, please when the electric does get cut off just go work for someone else, you are not cut out to run a business Tim.