Another Victim?

First I must tell you that I have never used the services of Managed.com and therefore can not tell you how good they are or boast about their great technical support.

The truth is – I don’t know anything about their service or technical support.

So why am I writing a review?

Managed.com may be the second victim in the fraudulent use of my PayPal account and this review is neither a positive or negative review of the company or its service. Rather, this review is to state how they responded when I notified them directly about the unauthorized use of my account.

As the company that was the intended receiver of my money, I discovered their business and read their site. From reading their site I found that they claim to be “a leading provider of world-class dedicated hosting, complex managed solutions, high availability network architecture, network infrastructure management, and secure contents distribution for small businesses, non-profit organizations, and global enterprises.” And by reading their contact page I see they are based in California and have both a phone and fax number plus several email addresses so you can contact them.

Because the unauthorized user of my account didn’t purchase the PayPal refund guarantee on October 7 when they made their purchase (big surprise), I was not able to go through PayPal to request a refund. So when I discovered the transaction on October 8, I contacted the billing department directly, explained what had happened and requested a refund. I also reported the transaction to PayPal as being an unauthorized use of my account and changed just about everything on the account in an attempt to keep the account from being broken into again.

Now being a trusting and naive person, I hoped that requesting a refund within 24 hours of a purchase would be honored.

WRONG!

Below is a copy of the billing departments email reply to my request and only my email address has been omitted for this review. Also, please note that the phone number contained in this letter is not my phone number so please don't try to use it to call me.

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Dear Susan Carroll,

Thank you for contacting Managed.com. Please be aware that we did not bill your PayPal account. A person logged into your account, and sent money directly to us, for an order they had placed. Also please note that this customer also used your information;

BillingName: Susan Carroll
BillingAddress: 16 N. Eddy
City: Fort Scott
D1: KS
ZipCode: 66701
D3: US
Telephone: 305-292-5964
Email: The email address I did have on my PayPal account was included.

If this is truly fraud, you may want to close your PayPal account, or change the password. Since you have already put in a pending investigation, and service was already set up for the customer, we cannot give you a direct refund. Please standby for PayPal's procedures.

Thank you.
Billing DeptManaged.com
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Needless to say this was not the reply I had hoped for.

Now for the good news!

PayPal completed their investigation by October 10 and refunded my money.

Who will I do business with in the future?

Well, if I ever decide to purchase a product like what Managed.com sells, I don’t think I will go to them. While their reply may be good business from a corporate point of view, I like companies that have a little more compassion for others and a better refund policy.
The service could not have been set up for more than 48 hours (the reply came within 48 hours of the purchase) so a refund would have been nice. But since this company does not post a refund policy, I guess they don’t have one.

As for PayPal – I think they did a fantastic job. Some of their procedures still confuse me since I know they didn’t have time to receive the requested snail mail copy of my claim before they could start the investigation when they notified me that the investigation was completed and my money refunded. I am only guessing that they take fraud complaints seriously enough to investigate them while waiting on a paper copy of the complaint and that the paper copy is required by law.

I pray that nothing like this ever happens to you. But if it does, may it get straightened out just as quickly and successfully as mine did.

Susan