Advanced Social Media
Complaint 340759 Details

My husband James received a call from this company May 5, 2015. The person on the phone (Chris Morris, if that is even his name) claimed that due to my husband being a disabled veteran, there were untapped grants my husband could qualify for. This was a very appealing proposition for him, as we currently have a significant amount of credit card debt we are finding it difficult to clime out of.
Chris told my husband, that he could not tell him more until he paid a $1200 fee and they sent him a pamphlet in the mail. He even said they were in good standing with the BBB. He also said he needed to sign something. He was very pushy and the form he wanted him to sign seemed very vague and like nothing he was promising on the phone (that once my husband received the pamphlet they would meet with us on the phone once a week to begin the grant writing process and after six week would write up the grant proposals for us. They also said he was guaranteed to get at least something, AS LONG AS we worked with them in the once a week meeting.) None of that was in the contract however, and I told my husband not to sign. Chris told us the contract is vague to protect them as a company against us disputing the charge. What a foreshadow that was!
Chris got very irate at this point and appealed to my husband telling him it was a great opportunity and that we would have three days to cancel so what is there to lose? Thinking he had time to find out more info and cancel in three days if he wasn't satisfied he went ahead and paid. The next day, I had found rip-off reports about this company and the lack of info on the company was also disconcerting. I told my husband he should call and cancel. He tried to call and cancel but no one would take his call. We filed a dispute immediately with Chase Financial whom we made the payment through.
We kept calling trying to cancel and on the third day were told there was no cancellation policy and also that what we had signed only bought us advice from the company, no guarantees other than that in the form of a pamphlet (no grant proposal writing whatsoever!). At that point it became a back and forth with Advanced Social Media and us through our credit card company. We had received a pamphlet in the mail from them about a week or two later. We were instructed by Chase to send the pamphlet back with tracking and delivery confirmation. We did so and faxed our evidence back to Chase. Chase then said we were probably in the clear and we paid the remainder of our card balance off and closed the card trying to eliminate some of our debt.
Two months later I mistakenly logged in to our account only to see that the charge had been re-billed to our closed account. I called Chase in tears, but apparently there was nothing the dispute department could do in the face of Advanced Social Media's fancy lawyers! Now we are in more debt then ever and it is overwhelming. I only hope others can avoid the same thing happening to them. How shameful for this company to take advantage of the elderly and disabled veterans! I can't believe a company is allowed to get away with this! I cannot believe there is not more protection for us as American citizens and that companies can manipulate the law to run scams like this legally. Please whatever you do, never give this company a dime!