July 2008 Jean Marie, from Reunions Unlimited called me to set up the Calhoun 20th reunion. Another classmate, the co-chair, had started the initial calls to them as chair, & could not be involved at that time; he asked them to call me to continue process. Via email and phone RU's Jean Marie and I chose a tentative date-location; she said she would be in touch in the fall for all follow up. We discussed how this would work and future correspondence. She said some decisions would have to be made but when the time comes she would defer to me to make those decisions. She asked if I would serve as chair; I said I could tentatively serve; I indicated I was a professional event planner and as such my work schedule may not allow me to take on added responsibilities. I told her I was not even sure I would attend a reunion. I then said that before any correspondence is created or sent I wanted input, to see it, approve it, and run it by the rest of the committee for feedback first. Within a week or two after that initial phone conversation classmates received a standard form letter from RU with preliminary info about the reunion. It named me as reunion chair & contact and asked everyone to fill it out and return it to RU. I was unaware that the letter was being created, had been sent & was very upset and appalled with this unprofessional behavior and action. Over the next few days classmates were corresponding, all expressing serious concerns & dissatisfaction with RU. Unbeknownst to me RU had poorly handled our 1st reunion, which I did not attend. All classmates who were in attendance were in total agreement that the 10th was poorly planned, poorly attended, poorly managed & they were dissatisfied with RU's services. Classmates then voiced concerns over RU's failure to contact me prior to sending the initial letter out with my name on it. We decided collectively we did not want RU to handle our reunion as we did not want to work with any company that was acting unprofessionally and already did not do what they said they were going to do. The other co-chair & I attempted to follow up with Jean Marie, who at first was not willing to listen to complaints or put us in touch with the owner, Bari. We each called several times individually & conference call expressing concerns and demanding to speak to Bari. Jean Marie was non-responsive & finally deferred to Bari. Another follow up conference call was made by the other co-chair and I to reach Bari but to no avail she was non-responsive. The other co-chair & Bari finally spoke & the other co-chair expressed all our concerns & dissatisfactions telling Bari that we would not be using her services for a reunion, that I would not be chairing the reunion, and he then dismissed them as organizers. The other co-chair spoke several times with Bari about this in great detail and in between all these series of calls and messages left for them, which was now well over a month from the initial July 2008 contact between me and Jean Marie, I then received a letter in the mail, pre-dated July 9, 2008 from RU stating I had retained their services to plan our reunion. The other co-chair called Bari again, as this was clearly a bullying tactic to railroad discussions and agreement we already had dismissing them from handling our event. Finally the reunion was considered cancelled and their services dismissed; we thought the matter settled. A week ago Feb 5, '09, 2:21pm EST, I received phone call from Jean Marie (we had not spoken since July 2008) asking me to call her to discuss the reunion. I was quite perplexed but called her back at 7pm and left a clear message that there was no reunion and I was confused as to why she was calling me, and asked her not to call me again unless she needed clarification on this matter. A week had gone by & no one called me back. Feb 13, '09, classmates received an invitation to the reunion, written on my behalf by RU, with my name on it! Even had we decided to use RU to plan out reunion they again sent out correspondence, with my name on it, which I was totally unaware of and never saw or approved in advance! 2 of called RU that day to complain & demand to speak with Bari, who of course was unavailable. The reps at RU refused to discuss the matter and just kept hanging-up on my classmates who then called me to make me aware of the new situaiton. I called RU at 4:45pm demanding to speak with Bari, who was not there; I was able to get Jean Marie on the phone, who claims Bari never told her the reunion was cancelled and their services dismissed. She claims she never received my voicemail on Feb 5 and when I asked her why she said she went home early last week; then was out sick that Monday. I asked her why she doesn't check her voicemail; she finally said she doesn't have personal voicemail - she said the number she told me to call her back on (where I left the message) was the generic RU message system -who is getting their messages? She doesn't know who has my week-old message. She said if she knew the reunion was cancelled and their services dismissed she would not have called me last week or sent the invitations. I asked her why she was calling me in the first place. She said she called me on Feb 5th to discuss sending the invitations -the same invitations that she consciously chose to send regardless of speaking with me in advance! I asked her why she sent the invitations after she just acknowledged she called to first talk to me about them - silence. Then she said she only handles the invites and email blasts and that's why she called me. Then why, if she claims she never received my message, would she not try to call me again before sending these invitations? I told her 2 of my classmates called RU today to rectify this and she said she was unaware of this. Jean Marie was defending her position of ignorance, then finally apologized & acknowledged this was actually unprofessional. She said she would have Bari call me on Monday, Feb 16 at work, probably after 1pm, when Bari may get there. This company had no right, no permission to use my name to send out invitations to a reunion they were no longer handling. They are engaging in strong-arm bullying tactics and hiding under the veil of ignorance. Their actions are damaging to my reputation and to my relationships with my classmates who keep getting correspondence that appears to be endorsed by me! This behavior is unacceptable and Reunions Unlimited should be ashamed. I will be demading an apology and a retraction, in writing to all my classmates acknowledging that I was unaware of their actions and they are not handling our reunion.