Called & talked to a woman calling herself Flore Gomez but she sounded like she had no accent at all. Talking to her some more I could hear a very subtle Hispanic accent when she pronounced a couple of words but you really had to strain to hear it. Otherwise like I stated she sounded totally 100% caucasian. She said they were Tax Relief Advocates & touted their “excellent” consumer & BBB ratings to sound legit. I highly doubt a 4/5 star rated, A+ accredited company would go on a fraudulent phone spam campaign without taking some sort of hit to their reputation. When I said this to her, she got very agitated & again tried to defend herself before attempting to flee the call but I pulled her back in by apologizing & saying I was interested in what programs they offer. She told me they only offer 1 program which was the “Fresh Start Program” & she would go over the details with me about my tax issues for my non-existent business.
She also said she would need my EIN number & that I needed to digitally sign some limited power of attorney & some other documents before receiving a written contract by them through the mail. I asked if that was legal & again she referred me back to their track record.
She finally got to the point of the call by saying there would need to be a $585.00 up front retainer fee at which point I told her I’ll pay the $585.00 but I’m going to need some addition services performed upfront on her end before I sign anything. she just said “Yeah, I think I’m going to end the call now.”
From what I’ve read some legit companies may ask you to pay a a small fee up front but $585.00 isn’t all that small to begin with. The lady kept saying that they offer a money back guarantee if I wasn’t satisfied & I told her that her word is meaningless unless she could point me to specific complaints that were resolved but granting people their money back on a respectable website. Either way I guess she didn’t like my counter offer.
I talked to a couple of males next. The first 2 hung up on me rather abruptly after confronting them about the numerous laws they broke just by calling me. The next male argued with me for 25 minutes as we slung insults at each other all while still trying to prove to me that they were legit.
The second female said that she was going to report my number to the authorities & I told her good luck in doing that without incriminating yourselves also.
The 3rd female I talked to was called Melissa. Even though it seemed like a decent sized call center, I swear these people just answer with different names for every call. This Melissa sounded just like the last 2 women I talked to. She gave me a different name for the company as did the previous male dickheads that I talked to.
She went on to help me with my non-existent tax debt yet again, only this time I said it was personal federal debt only. This woman, unlike the first 2, went on to say that they offer a lot of various services like offer in compromise, CNC status, penalty abatement, IRS payment plans ect. She went on to say that offer in compromise was their specialty since the majority of their clients get approved for that. (happen to know that the opposite is true) Interestingly enough, she never mentioned the Fresh Start Initiative that the others offered either. I asked her if she was going to do a soft pull on my credit because I know that they used to report that sort of thing up until 5 years ago or if you have a lien against you & I just wanted to see what she said. She told me that they didn’t need to do that but only contact the IRS to obtain my financial information to “see where I stood”.
Again she wanted a 5 hundred & something dollar payment up front, with no services rendered, on this unsolicited robocall that I was returning. I told her that I needed her snap chat & her only fans account names for my records & she seriously paused, like she was giving it some thought, before she hung up.