Complaint Review: TRS Limited

I received a letter from Tate & Kirlin Associates, Inc. saying a $139.97 charge for creditor TRS Limited had been sent to them for collection.  Neither my wife nor I had any idea what this charge was for, who TRS Limited were, or why this collection letter was the first time we'd ever received any bill for it.

So I called Tate & Kirlin and spoke to a woman named Sandy who said it was a charge from October 2013 (over 3 1/2 years ago) for some sort of Garcinia Cambogia weight-loss program that my wife signed up for online.  I spoke to my wife and she did recall visiting a site about Garcinia Cambogia (gotta give her credit - I can't remember what I was doing 3 1/2 years ago), but she never signed up for anything, nor did she ever receive any product.  Sandy said she'd signed up for some free trial that had an agreement in small print saying if she didn't cancel in 12 days she'd be charged.  Admittedly, they had my wife's email address and our mailing address from that time (we've sinced moved), which they must have gotten from somewhere, but they also claimed that they were unable to charge the credit card they had, which makes me suspect that they never had one.

Sandy first said that she could "make it go away" if we were willing to send them $100.  I told her we weren't going to pay anything and so she said I should write them a letter disputing the charge which I sat down to do.  But before I did I decided to google TRS Limited and the whole first page of results were reports on www.ripoffreport.com about both TRS Limited and Tate & Kirlin, and how they are a rip-off/scam/internet fraud.  I noticed that almost all the reports (over 30 of them) were posted in the last few months (since Feb. 2017) which makes me think this is a scam that they just started.

I wrote Tate & Kirlin a strongly worded letter which not only disputed the charge from TRS Limited, but also pointed out all the evidence on the internet about this being a scam.  I also told them that if there was any further attempts to collect this bogus charge, or any negative marks on my credit report as a result of it I'd be forced to contact the authorities.  We'll see if that makes it go away.

Bottom line:  if you get one of these collection letters DO NOT pay it.  Do what I did:  dispute the charge and tell them you know they're a scam and you're not going to be victimized or intimidated by them.