JonBart.com ™

This is the story of air costing $2.50 per ounce, and you thought it was cheap to breathe.

I get a lot of phone calls in my job. Some need help. Some think they need help. And then there are those who want to sell me things. There was a company who wanted to sell me things.

It started with a phone call in August with “Frank”. Frank said that he was going to send me a free sample pack of cleaning products. I said “great!”. Then Frank said he was going to send me a free NFL shirt and hat, and I said “great!”. And as the months went on, I got anti-static wipes, starbucks cards, some compressed air, some printer cleaner… Each time they’d call and confirm I wanted their free product, and I’d say… “Sure, great, maybe I’ll do business with you some point”. I’d occasionally ask, “So, no charge for this, right?” and they’d always respond, “No, of course not, we just want to buy your business down the road”.
Then our story turns. 24 cans of compressed air had been received over a month ago, along with some little individually-packed anti-static wipe. I was so happy to get them. I was so proud of getting free things. I gave them out like candy. Everyone wins.
Billing office emails: “Bart, we’re not paying this. What did you order? Who is “———”?” I had a sudden connect of thoughts. They charged me for some of those free boxes and didn’t say how much.

So here we go.. I’ve been had. They duped me. The bill was, are you ready for this….

$1000!

So what am I to do? We can’t pay it. (More after the jump, including pictures of the Air of Gold)

I look up information online, and what do you know… I’m not the only one duped. That makes me feel better. Someone posted the president’s phone/email on a business scam forum. Nice. I’ll go right to the top. I’ll send an email to not only the president, but also the person who posted this information revealing the scammy ways of the company. That should get his attention.
So off goes the email to my boss, the billing department, this lady, and Mr. Mean President. What I said didn’t take long before my phone rang. It was around 10 minutes. Oh boy, oh boy.. was he mad… I had threatened to reveal him on the internet and take him to the Better Business Bureau. I had also told him I was going to box the materials right up to send back to him.

(You see, by this point, I had shamefacedly gone to all the offices I had handed out air to, and was now asking for them back)

So… Here is the conversation… He’d accuse me of slander and told me I misunderstood his “aggressive mode of business” and that I had really agreed to buy these things just by accepting them, and I told him I was not under a legal obligation to buy, and that he could not prove I had put in a purchase order for the items, and that I was going to make sure people knew about his scammy ways. I offered to ship the mess back to him, but in the end, to shut me up, he promised to reverse the charge and let me keep the items. It was one of the bloodiest conversations. A full half-hour of him yelling at me that I couldn’t talk bad about his company or he’d sue for slander. I did agree not to “slander” his company if he wrote off the amount, so I’ve not used his name or the company name or logo in this post, but you can bet I’m tempted.

Remember I told you that I emailed a lady specializing in this stuff? She was really nice. She wrote and assured me that I didn’t have to pay, and that he would drop the charge, and told me how people like them stay in business. So many people just pay the amount, and write it up to experience, thinking they don’t have any rights and there is nothing they can do once they’ve been “had”, when in reality, the law favors the people on this kind of marketing. Some people just don’t stand up for themselves or are scared of a legal arrangement. I had no choice in the matter. My boss informed me that we would not pay regardless, so take care of it. So I took care of it. It’ll be a miracle if a lawsuit doesn’t come out of this, but last I knew, we were resolved.
I sure did feel stupid, but I do have that NFL gear and “free” air still. Sell you some for half price. Won’t charge you the $25 a bottle they wanted to charge me. (That was cheap compared to the wipes. They came in at around $2 A WIPE)
The moral of sad lesson in our human endeavor: “If it seems too good to be true, it probably is”. So be careful when a stranger calls with free things. Take it from me.