VMC Satellite VMC Satellite dishonest staff have committed electronic theft and ripped us off! Fairfax Virgina Nationwide

We responded to advertisement by VMC last summer stating we would receive three months free satellite service if we responded by midnight of that evening. We signed up on the internet and had the required $49.99 fee for a certificate electronically deducted from our bank account approximately by 10:00 p.m..

When I did not receive this certificate. I called VMC and was told I missed the promotion, I explained to the young lady on the phone this could not be because my bank records showed the money was received by them well before the deadline. This person became rude so I asked for a supervisor. The supervisor also stated I would not be able to receive what was promised, and also became rude. After several more attempts to get VMC to honor their advertisement, I Tried talking to Dish network who was sponsoring this program run by VMC. Dishnetwork said they could not help me and suggested I talk to Micael Lauston at VMC, He showed little or no concern that I was lied to by this company and appeared to me express some kind of right to rip us off because we dared to do business with him.

Over the course of a couple of weeks I had several more conversations by telephone with this (in my opinion) jack@$$.
And corresponded by E-Mail aproximately a dozen times. Michael Lauston absolutely refused to honor what was advertised by VMC and took it upon himself to refund my money.

About six monts later we received a threatening invoice from satellite to pay them $49.99 or we would be sent to collections. We immediately contacted Michael Lauston, to ask him what the hell was going on he told us we owed for a certificate for service. It was explained to Michael Lauston that dishnetwork verified we did not owe this money we did not receive or use a certificate to obtain satellite service. He did not care- Michael Lauston told us to pay or our credit would be ruined. We asked for records VMC had that gave them the right to act this way. About a week later we received a letter that showed my wifes name but the address and phone number were to a town neither of us had ever been, much less ever lived there. This is where VMC supposedly sent a certificate.

We called the phone number listed and talked to gentleman who stated he had been screwed by VMC also and had to get outside assistance to resolve his rip off by VMC. We reported this situation to Echostar communications. We were told to talk to Scott Novack. We attempted to talk to Mr. Novack and left a message for him and he had a man named Adam call that promised to call back but never did. The date to protect our credit was nearing so we decided to file a complaint with the Virgina B.B.B. We also called VMC and talked to someone named Charlie who is supposed to be Michael Laustens suppervisor. This person also threatened to ruin our credit. So we sent a check and a letter of protest to VMC, hoping the B.B.B. in Virgina could straighten this out.

After all of this had taken place we received our bank statement for Feb 2003 and found that VMC cashed our check of $49.99 extortion payment and also without any authorization from ny wife or me used information they received from me in Aug 2002 and stole an additional $49.99 from by bank account. We reported this to our bank and we are in the process of asking law enforcement for assistance. We believe this is electronic theft.

I E-Mailed the owner of VMC (As identified by VMC employee)Charlie Ergen at Echostar Communications. I wanted to know if he was as outraged by the conduct of his employees as I am. So far I have not received a reply from Mr. Ergen. We will see by his response if any as to whether he has any integrity or if VMC employees are operating under standard business policies.

Sam
Sacramento, California
U.S.A.

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