One day last week, MegaWife gets a call from someone claiming to be from MasterCard. They were offering her a new card they were coming out with, and she said it sounded like a good deal. 7.5% fixed int rate, no annual fee, lots of perks, very good card.
Anyway, she agreed to accept the card, gave the neccassary info, and paid $149 that was supposed to be some sort of processing cost or some such bull… unfortunatly, my wife is unaware that it is illegal for a credit card company to ask you for money in order to start a credit card (per FTC regulations). So anyway, she sent the money, and of course, no card showed up.
I tried calling the 800 number that was given to MegaWife for questions and it has rang busy every time I have called it (perhaps 150 to 175 times in the last 5 or 6 days).
Now I am trying to find out what company, or person has this 800 number and where they are located. I know there has to be a way to do this becuase cops do it all the time. Any Dopers out there that can help me find this scourge of a company and exact my revenge?
Not sure I made this clear, Dave–MegaWife was scammed, flat-out. Don’t have the slightest hesitation in going after these guys, but don’t bother trying to get ahold of them and complaining yourself. Do the Mafia’s victims complain in person? No–let the BBB or the Feds or somebody handle this, 'cause I think you’re way out of your league here, if you’re still thinking in terms of “I’m gonna find out who they are and give them a piece of my mind and make them give me a refund.” I predict that you won’t be able to find them–even if they aren’t specifically “American Capital”–and even if you did manage to get someone on the 800 number, they aren’t going to simply apologize and give you a refund–they’re criminals, Dave. They steal. They don’t give back.
The BBB is a private industry-supported organization of which this faux credit card company was almost certainly not a member. Ergo there will be little the BBB can do for you. If she sent the payment by US mail, you can vicariously nail them for (or at least threaten to charge them with) postal fraud by contacting the US postal inspectors. They have a website with a very simple form you fill out, and in my experience it actually works. After I’d been scammed about $20 by a company that refused to send out the merchandise, I reported them to the postal inspectors and within a couple months I got the merchandise I was expecting.