I’m sure the answer to the first question is “just google it” but I figured I’d ask anyway…
We bought and returned something to Overstock.com and the freight company they used is trying to screw us out of $400.
Long story short, someone (not us) organized a pickup of our item and because we weren’t the ones who set up the pickup, we weren’t home and were charged $200 for a no call/no show. Then we organized a pickup on a Thursday, but received an email from overstock (that I still have) that said the Thursday was rescheduled to Friday. They showed up on Thursday anyway and refused to pick up the item because it wasn’t on a palette and shrink wrapped, which we were never told to do. They’re charging us another $200 for their refusal to pick up the item.
We have gone back and forth between overstock and this company for weeks now and it basically boils down to overstock saying “We don’t schedule appointments and you shouldn’t have needed the palette and shrink wrap, you should tell them that” and the freight company saying “well this is how we do business so sucks to be you. Pay it or we’ll bring it to collections”.
We aren’t responsible for either of these charges, but neither company will do anything about it. We want to pay the money, then sue the freight company, or Overstock, or maybe both? We don’t know, but we don’t want to go to collections. What is the best way of going about that? Should we just Google “small business claims orlando” or something like that? I would hope we can at least get a free consultation to see if we have a case. Anyone done something like this before and can offer tips?
We haven’t paid yet. We put it off as long as possible in order to try and get the charges cancelled. I believe it’s a pay online or send the money in type thing.
Although doing a small bit of research between meeting at work, there apparently is no “lawyer”, it’ just bringing the case to a clerk. Now I’m worried it’s going to cost more to get our money back than it will to just pay it and be sad about it. Still looking though…
If you don’t owe the freight company money, don’t pay them. Paying them first then trying to get your money back is going to be difficult in the best case, and puts the onus on you to prove it’s illegitimate.
If you don’t pay them, the onus is on them to prove it’s legit. That means they have to sue you if they want to force you to pay. That’s almost certainly not worth it for them any more than it is for you.
Getting sent to collections just means a different company wrongly claims you owe them money.
Yeah you are thinking about this the wrong way. Do not transact money with them. What you do is when it gets sent to collections you contest it as a valid debt. Debt collectors are bound by various rules and processes, while anyone can “send a debt to collections” there are rules about what debts debt collectors are allowed to pursue, if you submit evidence to them it isn’t a valid debt there is a decent likelihood they suspend debt collection activities. There are rules about what can be on your credit report, if you successfully contest it, they can’t have it on your credit report either.
That’s also a really good point. We were blindsided by these bills and only after calling were we told “oh yeah there’s a fee for coming out”. There’s nothing we signed to or agreed to that says this. Although I don’t know how I could prove that without playing he said/she said. I guess if their entire company doesn’t have a policy about it…
You don’t have to prove anything, for a debt to be valid they need to prove you knowingly accepted a service or received a product on credit, that you are now refusing to pay for–in this scenario I’m not even sure you are legally the freight company’s customer. I’m not 100% clear on that aspect, but I know in the past when I’ve ever tried to resolve lost shipment issues with companies like Amazon, Overstock etc, one hindrance I’ve had when reaching out to UPS or FedEx is I’m just the “destination”, not the customer, so there’s limits in what I can get done with the shipment. With the freight company I have to question if Overstock was actually their customer. You didn’t engage in a business deal with with the freight company, you purchased an item from Overstock and they subcontracted out delivery of it to another firm.
This isn’t a 1:1 situation but I can share a brief anecdote from my career. A lot of our tenants are commercial, and it isn’t totally uncommon when a business goes under or decides to not renew a lease, shit gets left behind. We’ll usually review the property, determine if anything left behind is valuable enough to resale, and usually it isn’t so we just pay for a ‘junk out’, which is when we contract with a local junk company to rip all of the previous tenant’s shit out of there (it is usually much easier to sell or throw out commercial tenant property than residential fwiw). We often will try to get the previous tenant to pay for this, but they’re often LLCs that are in the process of going out of business so the % of those that work out isn’t high.
One time we had a tenant actually have a company come out and haul stuff away as part of their vacating the premises when their business went under and they quit paying rent. The tenant did not pay their invoice with that company, and the company contacted us I guess because they found out we owned the property, and attempted to get us to pay the invoice. We refused because we had no contracted with them to do anything. We had a standing relationship with a junk hauling company, and the rates charged by this company were significantly higher. I didn’t even use a lawyer on this, I literally just responded to their request for payment with a certified letter saying they were attempting to bill us for services we had never contracted for, and told them to cease contact with us unless they can produce some form of agreement showing that our business had agreed to engage with them for junk hauling. We never heard a word from them again. Most likely they realized from my letter we weren’t just going to fork over the $1500 or so, and it would be a fight to even try, and for most companies it just isn’t worth a fight over that kind of money.
You don’t have to prove you didn’t sign a document. There is obviously no way to do so. You just dispute it and they would have to somehow produce a signed document.
Agreed with everyone. You don’t need a lawyer, and definitely don’t give this company a dime. I’d also only interact with them in writing from now on.
Clearly, you must start by not paying. The odds are against them following up with much effort, and worst case might be a hit on your credit and annoying calls from collectors. Avoiding that is worth a couple hundred clams to some people, but to people like me it’s worth it to fight it out and win. Your call, on that one.
Is this interstate shipping? Depending on the interstate status and the logistical details then small claims may not be a solution for either you or the shipper. If this is interstate shipping it is heavily regulated and the shipper will want to avoid unnecessary trouble. Some technical mistake on their part could lead to a much heavier fine that the money they want from you. There may be no such mistake in this case but the shipper is still going to be cautious and consider what it is worth to them to collect on this.
Good luck with this and I hope you not only avoid any costs but also that it costs those no good rotten bastards their own time and money too.
We are definitely not paying them beforehand and my wife has composed a highly detailed letter explaining this whole situation to them and their parent company. This is including emails from them and Overstock and much more. We’ve also filed a complaint to the BBB and, surprise surprise, they have a D-. We’re threatening to dispute the charges and charge them more if our credit is dinged. Hopefully the letter details and the fact that we never agreed to any of this helps us.