An Internet directory firm that allegedly sent checks and debited the bank accounts of people who cashed them has been hit with a state lawsuit.
Florida Attorney General Bill McCollum filed suit last week against Direct Billing LLC, Palm Beach, a Boca Raton company, accusing it of deceptive business practices.
In addition to civil penalties, McCollum wants the firm to be prohibited from using solicitation checks and withdrawing funds from the accounts of people who cash them.
According to the complaint, Direct Billing sent $3.25 checks in mailings to both consumers and businesses. Anyone who cashed them received a “preferred listing” on a purported Internet directory, and billed for sums ranging from $29.95 to $49.95 a month, it continued.
Some victims were billed on their phone bills, others had the amount automatically deducted from the bank account to which they deposited the check, the court papers continue.
Consumers had money withdrawn “without their knowledge and for a service they did not know they were receiving,” the complaint states.
Businesses were vulnerable because the checks might be deposited along with ordinary checks, the state claims. It would be difficult for these firms to “discover the problem at a later date, and realize that they were being billed,” it adds. The phone charges would be paid
The complaint argues that Direct Billing’s Internet directory, “unlike that of many of its competitors, does not even appear as a ‘Sponsored Link,’ or at the top of any search engine listing” when consumers are searching for directories.
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