Consumer Law, Warranties Contract question, please help

[KAMIEJ]

Kind of long story, I will try and make short. Had a business that closed in May of 2003. In August of 2003, we had phones shut off and received final bill and paid it. Then we received a "revised final bill" for over $1117.00. It was from SBC Ameritech and they stated that our company signed what they call "completelink" agreement which would lower your phone usage costs over a period of 5 years. So it was 5 year contract, we asked for a copy of it, as we were not familiar with it. They faxed us a copy and it was signed by our secretary, who had not authority whatsoever to sign such a document. In fact she signed it in the year 2000 and at that time we were under negotiations to sell the business, so why would I have ever entered into a 5 yr contract when you could also do a 1 or 3 year contract! I have fought and fought with Ameritech over this and they say that because the secretary was under our "legal employ" that we are still responsible and that the contract is a binding contract. Can someone out there advise me if this is correct? They have turned us over to a collection agency. Can someone give me some advice? Thanks so much!

 

[Rathi]

That's saying that if a janitor had signed that contract, you would still be legally resposible to pay it.

I don't know the correct answer, but I'd guess that if you can prove your secretary did NOT have "power" to authorize such a contract, I can't see how they can hold it to ya...

Prolly wrong though, so don't quote me!

 

[KAMIEJ]

contracts

Thanks for answering my post. I hope I get some more replies. I have tried and tried to work with them, but I'm going to have to get an attorney to help me with this situation.

 

[Michael Wechsler]

Rathi is right on target and that would be my argument. More so you should argue that it is obvious that the secretary didn't even have "apparent authority" to sign the document, meaning that it wouldn't occur to anyone at SBC that they had the right person who might have authority, such as a Director of facilities who might not have authority but might be viewed as someone who can.

The only difficulty you may encounter is that they may claim that you don't deny that you had the contract and kept continuing to use the services and thus "ratified" the contract. That mgiht be a difficult argument to combat -- someone should have looked at the contract. After all, the phones didn't just have service due to magic but a contract that you knew existed.

Key here IMHO, argue with the collections agency of no apparent authority and see if you can settle low as a result.

Originally posted by KAMIEJ
Kind of long story, I will try and make short. Had a business that closed in May of 2003. In August of 2003, we had phones shut off and received final bill and paid it. Then we received a "revised final bill" for over $1117.00. It was from SBC Ameritech and they stated that our company signed what they call "completelink" agreement which would lower your phone usage costs over a period of 5 years. So it was 5 year contract, we asked for a copy of it, as we were not familiar with it. They faxed us a copy and it was signed by our secretary, who had not authority whatsoever to sign such a document. In fact she signed it in the year 2000 and at that time we were under negotiations to sell the business, so why would I have ever entered into a 5 yr contract when you could also do a 1 or 3 year contract! I have fought and fought with Ameritech over this and they say that because the secretary was under our "legal employ" that we are still responsible and that the contract is a binding contract. Can someone out there advise me if this is correct? They have turned us over to a collection agency. Can someone give me some advice? Thanks so much!

 

[KAMIEJ]

Re: Re: Contract question, please help

The only difficulty you may encounter is that they may claim that you don't deny that you had the contract and kept continuing to use the services and thus "ratified" the contract. That mgiht be a difficult argument to combat -- someone should have looked at the contract. After all, the phones didn't just have service due to magic but a contract that you knew existed.

Key here IMHO, argue with the collections agency of no apparent authority and see if you can settle low as a result. [/B][/QUOTE]


Actually the truth of the matter is we never even noticed any savings on the phone bills. It was a business and the phone bills were so high anyway, you had to "read" the phone bill, which we never did, we just paid them and filed them. It wasn't until they told us that there was something called a "link agreement" of some sort, that we even noticed it on the bill. It wasnt much of a savings at all. So I'd be telling the truth but whether I could get anyone to believe it would be a different story. I havent heard anything from them so maybe they will decide to let it go. We heard from a collection agency on it once and they told us to let them know if we disputed the charge.
We did let them know that we were disputing and they said they would decide and let us know in 30 days, we never heard a word, even after I sent a reminder to them. I figure they must not want their money very bad. This has been going on since November. Thanks for your info, I appreciate it!