Complaint Rating:

Company information:
Alter Funds
Omaha, Nebraska
United States
Phone: 402-305-5834

On August 24th, I made the mistake of, what I thought was looking into a company called work@home.com. I was led to believe that if I paid a good faith introduction fee of $.99 then I would receive an introduction packet to the work-at-home program and be put in touch with local businesses seeking work at home professionals. I never received any information from the company.

When I received my bank statement for the month, I noticed that there was and additional charge of $4.97. I called immediately and on September 22nd was reimbursed the $4.97 “maintenance fee” the company had tacked on. I was assured by the representative to whom I spoke that I was canceled from the program and that there would be no further charges. In essence, it was my understanding that I was done with the company that I “looked into” and there would be no more charges.

Now I find out on November 3, 2009 that there was an additional company, i.e. you all at Alter Funds have debited my account for $29.95 on October 19th (this processed in my bank on October 20th). I have not received any information regarding your company, nor your program, and was stunned to see the charge. I called in good faith thinking this had to be an oversight and that someone forgot to “click a cancel tab” or something and it would quickly be resolved. It was during the course of my request for a refund and to make sure my account was indeed canceled that I found out you are a separate company, and was informed by two of your representatives that the first company I called should have informed me that I needed to call yet another number in addition to the first number and that I had five (5) days to request a refund from the time of the charge. I find this policy in direct conflict with any other policy I have come across in merchant business. The standard refund policy for a non-receipt transaction is 30 days to allow proper notice to the individual being charged. Anything short of that reeks of fraud in my humble opinion.

I am bringing this to your attention because again, I was not aware of any remaining obligation. When I canceled the initial policy, I, as would anyone, assumed I was canceling the services in their entirety. I asked to have services canceled, amounts refunded and to be done with the company. I would think this would tell the representative that ALL services need to be canceled. I am concerned that there seems to be too much “ease of debiting accounts”, and not enough accountability to cancellation policies and refunds. This all feels very deceptive and very much like a scam.

I did try and call back to the company to get the fax number and the phone number to the corporate address and was refused an answer since I was not a current account any longer.