DEX Media DEX Online Fraudulent contract Internet

Today a representative from DEX called our business and asked for me by name. She said that they had sent us two invoices which had not been paid and were past due. I told her I had no idea what DEX was, and had not received any correspondence from them. She said that I personally had authorized online advertising in May of last year (2013) and I explained to her that it was impossible, because I did not have the authority to do so, I had no idea who DEX even was, and if they had authorization from me it was fraudulent. She said that the company had been in business 20+ years and was not involved in any fraud.

She claimed to have a recording of my verbal consent, and I explained that I would never have given such consent, and unless they had a signed contract which the owners had signed, we would not be paying for anything. She told me that my verbal consent was as legally binding as a signed contract and I again told her that I had not given my verbal consent for anything. I ended the call by telling her to do whatever she had to do, but that we would not be paying them, and hung up.

We get several of these type phone calls a week, from several different companies, and have never authorized anything, period. I think what they do is call and ask for the office manager or accounts payable person's name, and once they have a name they call back and say that person authorized the purchase of whatever they're selling. I'm sure there are companies who fall for this line and these threats, and these rip-off artists are laughing all the way to the bank. I'm convinced that one way to handle them is to never give them your name, and I've instructed everyone who answers the phones here to not give out anyone's name. Another thing is never to "confirm" anything regarding your company's name, address, website, email, etc. over the phone unless it is someone you know or someone you were expecting to phone.

Hopefully this post will help stomp out these scammers!