Beware: Telemarketing Scams

Today when going through our mail, Danae came across a piece of what looks like Junk Mail, advertising some health insurance program. We normally just open and shred these, but Danae read it, and to our surprise we were informed that they had already charged us $9.95 for an introductory fee and will be charging us $50 per month starting in January….

Hmmm, this isn’t a good sign, but usually they are just trying to scare you into calling, they didn’t actually charge us did they? So a trip to the bank’s website cleared it all up for us. Errr, did it? Behold, on November 30th there is a charge for $9.95 from a place called “HCPGOLD”, Health Care Plus. So I do a search online for HCPGold, and guess what I found? See for yourself, [Google search], Anytime a search for a company begins with titles like "Complaints Board", "Complaint Wire" and "Consumer Complaints", you know this is not a very good company.

Turns out that they call you (usually, some people were never called) with some type of special deal for coupons. Hmmm, we were called about receiving $50 gas voucher and some $25 Walmart gift cards as a "thank you" for buying a product from this company, even though we have no idea what we bought from them. We said yes to the free stuff and were instantly signed up for this scam, but some people were signed up even for saying no to them... it seems like this company doesn't care, they are going to charge you no matter what.

Doing some more looking into my bank account I found two more charges from "WC *VALUE PLUS " and "WC *HOMEPLAY", for only a couple bucks, but still, I don't know who they are, so I search for them as well. Same search results. It seems that these companies are all tied together somehow. Doing some more digging it turns out that these three companies are fakes, the real company is called Provell an honest looking company, but searching their website clearly shows ties to the other three companies. Someone posted a Ripoff Report about this company, and his research shows that they are all owned by a "Damark International".

So all the complaints that I found were dealing with how people are being charged without authorizing the charges, had a hard time getting a partial refund, let alone full refund for anything more than a month (some were taken for $300 total, some more), had a hard time getting these people to stop charging their account, and would refuse to mention where they got the credit card info. In every case that I read about, people are being charged without knowing it, and without receiving any products at all.

I have already cancelled our debit card and gotten a new one on order to stop all further charges and I'm being mailed the paperwork by my bank for reporting frodulant activites, and tomorrow we will be spending our time trying to get our $13 back from this company! Then we will report them to the BBB, state Attorney General, Federal Trade Commision, and even the FBI. This may sound like a lot of work for only $13, but these people shouldn't be taking anything out of my account, and they have taken others for hundreds, so even if I don't get much out of it, at least I may be able to help some other people to get their money back and to protect others from this happening to them. Plus, the only reason they only took us for $13 is because we caught it right away. HCPgold promised to take $50 / month, and the two WC's take $19.95 EACH. That's $89.90 per month that would be STOLEN from us had we (Danae) not caught this in time.

So if any telemarketer calls, don't give them any information and make sure that you keep an eye on your account!

Oh yeah, and we never received our Gas / Walmart coupons and vouchers.

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