PaymentOne Corp. has continued charging my at&t telephone account for a service that was cancelled over a month prior. Paymentone corp charges at the beginning of the month for services yet to be recieved. This "allows" them to post charges to your phone service after having cancelled your contract with them. I my case, I had cancelled service on 16th on january. The billing cycle for Paymentone does not end until the 17th of each month. However, paymentone corp did not post the cancellation to my account until a day later--so they could charge me for a whole month of service which was cancelled. This is called FRAUD. Person(s) or entities cannot lawfully charge for goods or services that are not received/enjoyed by a consumer.
If anyone with issues about paymentone is as angry as I am, Classaction Lawsuit is the way to go. We cannot let these people continue to extort monies from consumers while hiding behind the murky, corporate customer sevice blanket. Someone always has the authority to reverse/credit unlawful charges...and those people need to be held accountable.

My parents were just hit with 5 months of unexplainable $49.99 charges from "PaymentOne.com" on their AT&T bill and my mom asked me to call AT&T to figure it out and get it refunded. I realized instantly that this was basically a fraudulent charge from a third party and AT&T would definitely not be legally able to do anything for me.

Technically, this is not fraud. This is one of many companies that have begun a new form of psychologically-enhanced direct marketing in which you are charged before you are aware of being charged. The company actually "makes the sale" when you fail to call them and demand your money back. I was hit by this exact same thing. Here's how it works: The company makes a phone call to you, offering their services. You decline, but the memory of the phone call sticks with you. You see the charges on your phone bill months later and realize it was unauthorized. You call them back, and demand a full refund. They offer you a partial refund, saying that they will contact you back with a recording of the phone call in which they claim you agreed to the service. Then, remembering the phone call but not the details, you doubt yourself into thinking "maybe i did somehow agree to this" and think getting partial credit back is better than getting no credit at all if they actually DO have such a recording. This is an intimidation tactic they use so you don't demand the full refund. But there is a way to fight back.

In my case, having worked for both a telemarketing company and a customer service company, I knew better than to fall to these very effective tactics. I called PaymentOne Corp. and demanded a full refund for the 5 months they had billed me of $49.99 each. The first rep I talked to asked for my phone number, first and last name, and my job title. When I asked her why she needed my job title she first pretended the phone connection was breaking up or that she couldn't hear me, and then when the "broken" connection came back she asked me for the job title again, and when i asked again why she needed that info, she replied "to address you more appropriately." This information is valuable to companies who trade consumer information, and the rationale behind it is basically even if they have to refund the fraudulent-though-technically-legal charges, they can at least get some of your information to sell to their affiliates in the process. After this, I politely asserted that I was unaware of the charges and the service until now and that I had never agreed to the charges and would like a full refund for all 5 months and cancellation of the service.

She then tried to distract me by first acknowledging that she would be happy to cancel the service and refund what she could, and then tried to distract again by asking for the dates of the charges, which I had conveniently available from AT&T's website, and then after her attempt to confuse me failed, she asked if the most recent charge was the charge I wanted refunded. I replied, no I would like all of them refunded. She said she couldn't do that and I told her I need to speak to her supervisor. She told me that a supervisor would tell me the exact same thing, but I replied that's OK, I would still like to hear it from her supervisor.

She put me on hold for a couple minutes, and then came back on the line saying she had spoken with her supervisor and that they agreed to refund 3 of the charges and would be calling me back with a recording of the call in which I supposedly agreed to their terms and conditions. I flat out told her as politely as possible that I didn't believe her, and I would like to speak to a supervisor if she could not authorize a full refund.

She then put me on hold again for another couple of minutes and then her supervisor came back on. after explaining myself to her, she told me she would "refund all 5 months for a total of $229.97, " which she said was the maximum amount she could authorize to refund, and that she was making an exception because she wasn't even supposed to do this and then started to give me the cancellation number.

This was basically an attempt to assume I was too lazy or slow to do the math of 5 x 49.99 = $249.95, and in the excitement of getting a fairly large refund and extra-special treatment she hoped I would accept this partial refund offer. I politely told the supervisor that I would like the full amount of $249.95 refunded back please to which she again used the intimidation tactic saying that they had a recording of our authorization and that would be all she could do for me.

I told her I didn't believe she had such a recording because I knew we had never agreed to it, and then after putting me on hold again she told me she would refund the full $249.95 back to my account and that it would appear in 1 to 2 billing cycles, then again tried to distract me from the fact that I will have to wait 2 months for my money by saying to refund the tax I would need to talk to my "local provider" which in this case would be AT&T. At this point I accepted this, although for anyone out there fighting this, I would encourage you to demand a faster turnaround time for the refund. There is a high likelihood that I will not get any such refund in 1 to 2 billing cycles and that this company's survival is banking on the fact that I am too rich or too busy to worry about or remember the charges and will forget all about the charges by that time. Hopefully they will be wrong.

This one goes out to anyone who has been a victim of direct marketing. Stay smart.