Fraudulently ordered service

[Grasshopper1234]

Jurisdiction

Washington

I recently received a bill from one.com for a domain name. The bill was for about $35.

I have never done business with one.com, never ordered a domain through them, and have no idea if they're even legitimate. This makes me wonder if the bill is fraudulent.

One.com has no listed contact numbers. I was able to chat with them, and they won't confirm if they sent the bill. I told them I was concerned that the bill may be fraudulent, and if not, the domain was fraudulently ordered. They refused to confirm if they sent me a bill or not.

They told me my only recourse was to file a police report and send it to them. They would then open an investigation. I told them a police report would contain additional, sensitive personal information, and no, I wasn't going to send one to them. Especially because I couldn't confirm anything was legitimate. It seemed a little odd that they were asking a potential victim of ID theft to send them sensitive personal information, thereby increasing chances of further victimization.

I asked the chat room person if he'd pay a surprise bill from a company with which he'd never done business and he said no. No surprises there.

He did say the account will be sent to collections if it goes unpaid.

What are my rights here? What would be my best course of action? I suppose I could send one.com a certified letter requesting they open an investigation. Any other ideas?

 

[jayh991]

Your situation is quite common. There a hundreds of disreputable "companies" which send out fraudulent invoices for small amounts hoping you'll just pay it. Often threats of credit reporting are used to pressure you into doing it and they sometimes offer to "cancel" the service if you pay the one time bill.

You can send a letter yourself demanding they produce verification of the account including when it was opened, how, under what authority, etc and stating you'll report the agency to the BBB and CoC. I would suggest you see a local attorney to draft the letter for you. It will carry a bit more weight coming from an attorney's office. Most will only charge a nominal fee to do it, much like a cease and desist letter.

If it does end up on your credit report you have the right to challenge the reporting by going through the credit agency (Experian, Equifax, etc). The credit agency will demand the company prove the debt and if they cannot, it will be removed from the report. I've had to do this twice in the past and it takes about six months, but it can be done with minimal cost.