Ripped Off in NY & MN

Tue, May 6, 2008 at 4:47 AM
Esafe and DNC ENV are stealing from me too!

Hi I just thought I'd write to tell you about my latest troubles with a company called Greenzap. Greenzap was billed as a paypal killer, and I joined after hearing about some horror stories of what PayPal has done to some people (see www.paypalsucks.com). But as it turns out, paypal has nothing on greenzap. First, I wanted to simply transfer money between my bank accounts in Syracuse and Minneapolis, which was suppose to take 7-10 days. After 2 weeks with no results, I cancelled the transaction and had my bank put a stop on it as well. I tried to delete my greenzap account but found no way to do this. I then forgot about it. In August, as I was getting ready to leave the country for a year, I found a $43 charge in my bank account, I believe from Mazumah, Inc. I called the number listed on the check and complained and they did send me a refund check, but I still went to my bank, closed the account, and opened a new one in its place.

Everything had been great up until 2 weeks ago, when I logged into the OTHER bank account I had put on greenzap (the one in Syracuse) and saw that there were TWO fraudulent charges on my account, one an electronic withdrawal made on 4/10/08 to Safe Inc eSafe Inc in the amount of $19.95, and a second withdrawal on 4/17/08 to DCL ENV.,Inc in the amount of $19.75 (and this in an electronic check form with my name on it no less!). I called my bank and told them that both of these charges were fraudulent and I had not authorized them and I wanted them to put my money back into my account. Remember that now I am still out of the country, but they didn't know this of course and told me I must "step into" the branch to take dispute the charge. I even spoke to a manager who also said I must "step into" the branch. Not only is it frustrating that I cannot take care of this over the phone, but its frustrating that people can make fraudulent charges to my account without my authorization to begin with. I told my bank this and they said that if this company has my routing and account number then they can pretty much do whatever they want. I guess that's true, but I still think there should be some kind of system in place where only checks that I sign specifically or that have been written BY ME in my online banking system should be honored. I don't think that is very difficult. My bank by the way is M&T.

So, moving on. In the memo of the check that was taken from my account (the one to DCL ENV, Inc) was a phone number: 1-866-925-1969. I called this number and got an answering machine and left my name, my problem, and my phone number. I completely expected nothing to be done with this but miraculously, received a phone call the next day from a woman called Laura. She told me that their company has recently acquired a number of other companies are in the process of absorbing them. This has in turn caused problems with their systems, apparently charging many customers inadvertently. I said ok, fine, and she asked for my name and the number of charges and how much each one was, I told her and she said they would be credited back to my account within 2 days and to call back if I hadn't received my money. She also told me my information had been removed from their system. I was happy about this, I prefer to work it out with the company if I can first. So I waited those 2 days and nothing happened, and I called back and she said they both should have been posted, so I waited a week and still nothing has been posted to my account.

Now I'm getting the bank involved. This account is joint under myself and my mom, since it was opened when I was a minor, so she can step in and act in my behalf to dispute the charges. The bank said they would be happy to put the money back once they find out that these were unauthorized charges. I'm beginning to think that Laura told me the money was going back into my account to placate me into sitting around and waiting until too much time has passed to actually do anything about this. I hope that this can help others. I've already done a number of searches that show it has happened to a lot of people. The more I read the more it seems like Laura is their go-to girl to calm people into submission.
- Justin

The above post was copied directly from the e-mail sent in. Personal identifiers were removed.