It doesn’t matter if your elderly relatives have worked the past 65 years earning their money in an honest and ethical American job…US Medical Trust will gouge their wallets -or, rather, credit cards - and keep the money with impunity. It doesn’t matter if you don’t use their services, it doesn’t matter if you actually didn’t want their services, it doesn’t matter if you tell them this and you try to get the money back. They keep the money.
US Medical Trust’s stock-in trade is strong-arm phone tactics and tape-recording your elderly relative giving them his or her credit card number for some ambiguous service. Just like con-men. The tape recording gives them “proof of contract.”
Elderly members of my own family were taken advantage of by the US Medical Trust. One was so devastated and embarrassed about not knowing how her credit card was charged $480 by these rat bastards that she wants to assign us power of attorney so she doesn’t get screwed again.
And I am not the first nor the last person to be outraged by their conscience-less tactics.
In my last post on these creeps, I reported that after our complaint directly to the company was pointless waste of time, we complained to the New York Better Business Bureau. The New York BBB followed up, but reported that the US Medical Trust refused to answer the complaint. But we were in good company; New York BBB gives US Medical Trust an “F” grade in part because they haven’t bothered to responding to a number of complaints from the New York BBB. Remember, US Medical Trust is not a member of the Better Business Bureau, which in itself should tell you something.
So we took our complaint to the New York Attorney General’s office. Here’s what happened:
The AG’s office quickly followed up our issue by presenting US Medical Trust the complaint, but recently (in April 2011) notified us that, “Despite our efforts, they have failed to respond.” Quite the recurrent them with this company.
According to the AG’s office, mediation is a voluntary procedure and since US Medical Trust did not bother to respond, our only recourse actually is to take the matter to court.
The New York AG’s office has some helpful information, though: contact your local Small Claims Court for further information and, in New York State, for a booklet explaining how to use the Court. Free assistance in preparing a small claims case is available from the New York Public Interest Research Group (“NYPIRG”). The telephone number for NYPIRG’s Small Claims Court Action Center is (212) 349-6460.
We are going to follow up on this resource and report back in a future post where it takes us.
I spoke with an AARP Elder Watch advocate who told me the type of phone-solicitation strong-arming of elderly done by US Medical Trust is a common tactic among unscrupulous companies who make sure they tip-toe just within the bounds of the law to grab your money and run.
Here’s another note of caution: the pharmacy company that US Medical Trusts affiliates with or runs (their cheap flyers and sloppy literature are quite unclear) is not under the jurisdiction of the United States. Read the fine print. If you dispute any issue with the pharmacy, it must be done under laws of Canada.
Unfortunately, just because it’s greedy, unethical, and blatantly ripping off the elderly doesn’t make it illegal. Which means getting your money back from them can be problematic.
Those behaviors do, however, make the operators of US Medical Trust a bunch of barely legal scumbags.
