“Their representative . . . continues to call . . .  after repeatedly being told we want off their call list.  He calls several times a day and has said that he will have all his friends call also, just to annoy our company.”

If your guess would be that these statements came from a collection agency, you’re absolutely right.  But if your guess is that they came from a collection agency trying to collect a debt, you’re wrong.  They’re taken from a complaint about a debt collector who calls every bit as often as one trying to collect a debt, but in this case is trying to sell its collection services to a business that doesn’t want to buy. 

Commercial Investigations, Inc. (CII), of Van Nuys, telemarkets businesses soliciting debts to collect for them.  Though many of its 64 complaints come from California, others come from all across the country.

Petaluma Valley Drywall in Petaluma, California, is one company who responded to CII’s call by asking them to collect a $74,000 debt.  Kat Burroughs, Administrator for the company, says they had to pay CII $3,000 to file a lawsuit.  When the defendant countersued, though, CII dropped the suit, telling Petaluma Valley Drywall that they “don’t deal with counterclaims.”  Later Petaluma Drywall learned that only $400 of their $3,000 payment had gone to CII’s attorney.  Furthermore, CII refuses to refund anything to them or to provide them an accounting.  Burroughs says that when she tries to contact a company supervisor, she’s put on hold for 20 to 30 minutes or hung up on.  Yet the company still calls weekly to solicit business from them.

When CII called Fred Hoff, a painting contractor and owner of A Fresh Coat, Inc., of Saint Francis, Minnesota, they offered a 30-day free trial of their services.  Fred and his wife, Dustie, gave them a $1,200 invoice to collect.  After a few days, CII told them they would have to take the debtor to court and needed $2,500 in advance for court costs and attorney fees.

The Hoffs, suspicious about the request for such a sum, got a Better Business Bureau report on the company and cancelled CII’s services.  They report that by the end of the week they’d received a call from CII telling them they owed them 10 percent of the debt and threatening to take them to court and report it to the credit agencies if they didn’t pay it.  “They tried any tactic possible to threaten us to pay them this money,” says Dustie.

Shad Johnsen, who offers designing and sales of kitchens and bathrooms through his business, Portrait Kitchens, in St. George, Utah, considered using CII’s services, but just reading the company’s contract made him change his mind.  “They told me just to read the asterisked parts,” he says.  “Those two parts were fine, but I read the rest, and it gave the company the right to negotiate whatever terms they wanted, including the final balance.”

Though Johnsen said no to CII, he soon afterward received a call from them, telling him that the client whose debt they were going to collect was very irate with him.  “I have a great relationship with this client even though he owes me money,” Johnsen says.

Johnsen pointed out to CII that they did not have permission to contact this client on his behalf since he had never signed a contract.  Still, they sent him a bill for the work they said they’d already done for him.

CII wrote to cancel their charges, though, after Johnsen threatened to--and did--contact the Utah Attorney General and the Better Business Bureau.

CII, described by many complainants as rude, threatening, and abusive if they don’t give them business and money up front, does seem to back down sooner or later in a lot of cases.  But some business owners, especially those who don’t want to deal with CII, have to put up with incessant calls before that happens.  Greg Colby, for example, who owns a farm equipment store in Iowa, says they called him wanting to know if he had any outstanding receivables with which they could assist.  “From that point forward, they were harassing us, calling us every five minutes . . . I felt they were forcing me into a collection process.”

Colby had indicated some interest and was willing to pay a percentage of that CII collected, but he was not willing to give them the $3,000 they wanted up front.  He got a Better Business Bureau report at that point and decided not to do business with them.  “They got nasty on the phone,” he says.

Colby reports calls 15 times in 30 minutes until he threatened to file a complaint against the company.

CII’s complaints come from both businesses for whom they want to collect and debtors.  Debtors say CII tries to collect debts they don’t owe, continuing to pressure them for payment even when they deny the existence of the debt.  An Omaha resident says they sent her a letter claiming that she and her husband owed $1,200 to a company they’d never heard of.  “When I called them about this, they said they would investigate it and return my call.  They called me a month later, wanting to know why I had not paid the money.”  When this consumer requested a written statement from CII, she was hung up on.  She, also, says they used abusive language.

Although California law offers consumers protection against debt collectors’ unlawful practices, it offers no help to businesses hounded by debt collectors’ (or any other type of business) calls soliciting business.  Even do-not-call lists won’t accept business numbers.  Our complaints do reveal, though, that even the threat of filing a complaint with the Better Business Bureau or the Attorney General does stop at least some of the calls.

We assign CII an “F” rating.  The company has not responded to most complaints presented to it, although three complainants do report that they were satisfied with the resolution to their complaint.  Only one of these involved a refund; in the other cases, the satisfaction resulted because CII simply stopped calling.  For a significant number of complainants, that’s all they wanted in the first place.