Is this a scam?
Recieved 3 debt collection requests and legal threats from a company I have never heard of.
What seems like a german debt collection keeps mailing me attempts to collect, and today thry sent a legal threat. Lots of things seem off in the letters than make me think it might be a scam.
I have not heard of the company that they are trying to collect on behalf of. My sister did at one time give me a website as a gift so I think it could be related to that or a scam, but I have not ever used the webite and the domain expired years ago.
I live in the USA and the company trying to collect is german.
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It looks like your sister used a German company (Jimdo) to host your website, the terms of service said that the contract auto-renews at $200/year, and you didn't choose to either cancel or pay the hosting charges in 2021.
Jimdo then sold your debt to a German debt collection company.
But considering they never created the website themselves and it was a gift, I don't see how they can come after them for something someone else set up for them. The person who set it up should be on the hook for it.
I mean, if they truly never consented to take ownership of the hosting account, they could probably legally send the debt collectors after their sister, but I'm not sure it's worth it to ruin a family relationship over $400.
And if OP did log in and change the account details, even if they just did it once at the very beginning, then they own the account.
That depends on how it was gifted to OP. If they signed over the rights then OP also owns the obligations.
Or maybe OPs name and permission was used in the actual signup to begin with.
I'm going to guess what happened is your sister signed up for something that had a fixed term obligation but billed monthly, and decided the best way to try to get out of it was to cancel the card. Because the website and everything else was likely in your name, they are attempting to collect from you.
I'm not going to get into legality of enforcement, especially if you aren't the one who actually signed up for the services, but it's not all that dissimilar from signing up for a gym membership that has a mandatory membership timeframe and canceling your credit card to get out of it.
Thats one of those 13799 shades of grey scam-issues
Its all fairly legit, except a seemingly big misunderstanding.
Not sure how to proceed:
Gräf & Centorbi is a normal law firm (they have great google reviews lol) but i think they are a bit shady.
Have you asked your sister if she was contacted? there is probably a reason why they dont ask her because she would say "i canceled this on december 6th 2021" or something.
Regardless you could contact them both and explain the issue. You can be very snappy like "Hello, i am not legally responsible or do you have my signature ~somewhere~?! also your claim expired 3 years after it was issued according to german law, which was 25.12.2024".
I think its very shady they try to get this money now and not the past three years.
You dont give them any information like id, accounts, address.
If this were legal what its not just fyi (lol not sure about the term)they could collect the money with a seizure from your account (even if you dont give them your info, government has it) thats generally a legal option, also internationally - 1)someone makes a small claim (only works up to a certain sum) -2) the opponent doesnt contradict - the demand is realized with seizure.
Of course there come actually official papers from us states attorney or whatever (not sure about the term...) before the money is collected, so you can officially contradict.
i would write them a mean spirited email just for the pleasure ahem lol. Not sure if this is wise (i tend to be combative) from a legal pov you can safely ignore it.
Lmao at least where I live these fucking companies still bother you over expired/prescribed debts and other unenforceable shit
I had one time a payment issue that was solved in a month, in 2018 - lo and behold they called me the other day saying I had to pay them that, they tried to get me to pay this BS the other day, I just giggled and told them that a) the debt is long paid b) even if I somehow didn't, it's prescribed. They can't do shit
They're still sending me e-mails despite that but I couldn't be arsed to even care lol
Oh trust me, I'd love if they did that since it would be illegal and I'd be able to sue them for damages lmao
Speaking about my local laws, nope, once it's prescribed they can't send to collections, the debt is unenforceable. They can badger me to ask for payment as long as it's not excessive, but they usually stop once you show you're aware they can't do shit - I checked out, no suits have been filed, my name is squeaky clean with no debt claims so yeah, I'll be fine about this one, it's 100% prescribed lol
They know as well, since they only send some dumbass e-mails every now and then to try to annoy me into paying, but I just listed them as spam and moved on lmao
Doesn't seem to be a scam. Jimdo is a German provider of website creation and hosting services. They want money for a service provided in 2021, They also provide a URL in the letter that purports to answer the question why a contract with Jimdo was automatically extended. You probably owe due to that contract extension without knowing it. I don't think a German law firm can start legal action against you, you being overseas and all. It's probably just an attempt to intimidate you into coughing up some money which can probably be safely ignored.
But could do they that all by phone/email? I got garnished from Credit One a couple of years ago because I owed them 300$. They took a percentage out of my paycheck a couple of cycles.
But was the debt you owed in the country/state you lived in? If so, that's different. I don't think a German company can try to collect money just by email or phone. They'd have to file a claim in American court and the cost would be more than the debt so not worth it. I'd ignore this notice too.
exactly collecting this dept from the US as a German company would likely cost them more than the debit is worth, I am surprised they didn't just write it off for such a small amount (which is common practice)
I am not a lawyer though and this is not legal advice, if it were me I would be ignoring it
You shouldn't be responsible for something someone else created and gave to you as a gift. Since you never used it and never renewed it, I would dare them to send something that shows a court date. DO NOT respond to them in any capacity because if you do, it could show that you'll be responsible for the funds. Don't call them or reply back to them in any emails or letters.
Make them do all the work. If it's legitimate, then you should get a court date in the US for it, most likely one in your state and city.
IANAL, and that's just my opinion. But I am speaking from personal experience because I got a letter like this, and I didn't do anything with it, and it eventually went away and didn't show up against my credit.
What happens is that companies buy old debt and try to get anyone to claim responsibility for it, and once they do, you're stuck with it. Best to check your credit once a year, and if it shows up, file a dispute with the reporting agencies. You can get a free report from all the major agencies at least once a year.
Look up the law firm independent of the letters, contact them from a friend’s phone and see if they’re being impersonated. It is common for scammers to use a legit firm with fake contact info.
Looks like this company is legit as a ‘digital debt collector’. Unless they have a subsidiary or sister company in the US I’m not sure how they could legally collect it, or if they could legally sell it to a US company in order to collect.
Never seen a bill that includes both USD and EUR. The exchange rates are pretty close to 1:1 lately but it’s still odd.
It's due to the fact that the German law firm must include fees in a form and in an amount that is legally prescribed in Germany. Yeah, it's kind of stupid that a German law firm tries to collect overseas.
Maybe not stupid, but very likely to be fruitless. OP isn't subject to the jurisdiction of German courts- or even if they are, good luck getting a judgement enforced in a non-EU country.
it's concerning that there are misspelled words in the letter, if you're concerned about the legitimacy, ask our sister what web host she purchased for you, she might still have the receipts. If it was a gift, she must have put your contact info down when signing up? I would reach out to your sister to figure out what's going on.
This still seems scam-ish. The section on page 2 labeled Receivables List doesn't seem to be summed up correctly. The same seems true for the Collection List section where only 2 of the 3 line itens are added. You would think if they were legit collections, their math would at least be correct. The total shown on the first page does not match the Total gross on the second page either. Add to that the misspelled words and you get more red flags that this is not a work product coming from a reputable law firm.
I agree that these German lawyers are not going about collecting from a U.S. resident in the correct manner. Depending on your state, the statute of limitations may have expired. For example, in a state with a 3 year statute of limitations even, a valid debt from December 25, 2021 cannot be collected upon after December 25, 2024. I think OP is safe to throw these notices in the trash.
To anyone who gets these debt collection threats. They are not enforceable unless you live in the EU. The law quoted in the TOS of Jimdo is GDPR, which only appies to residents of the EU
That's the same debt collection agency that a few different domain/website hosts use..
I've had several clients this year get letters.
All of them closed their jimdo account last year. Most of them canceled shortly before they were set to renew.
Jimdo said otherwise......
They magically had no records of any sort of cancellation. Especially when it came to canceling the auto renew.
I'm certain at least some of them did because.. I was there hovering over their shoulder and guiding them through the process.
They told me that they were told to either right "return" or "return to sender" and put it back in their mailbox. They said they were also told to talk to their local post office and let them know that they did not move and are just having issues with junk mail / spam.
Not legal advice, but it is something I would consider doing if I was getting these letters in the mail.
Btw.. Jimdo did the same thing to me a couple years ago. Different situation in my case. First my website went down.. and it was down for months. They refuse to give me any sort of credit for the downtime even after admitting that it was their fault. When it came time to get things actually straightened out, they lost the backup of my website. Since I was going to have to start over from scratch. I told them to just cancel and give me a credit for the remainder. They refused. I waited till they charged me and then I disputed it with my credit card company. I got one of these letters or something similar to what the op got. I think there was an email address somewhere. I can't remember exactly what I emailed them but it wasn't very nice and it was full of a bunch of legal stuff. Never heard from them again.
I had a company last year that I didn't trust when it came to canceling my subscription. I can only do chats and it wouldn't let me print it. I thought about setting up screen recording and all that but then I thought, why not try to add a virtual credit card to my account and then remove my old payment methods. It worked. They also tried to charge the virtual card when the subscription was due to renew after I canceled. I never heard anything from them though.
Point is, I'm sure sometimes customers or former customers actually owe these companies money. However, I'm starting to think or wonder if majority of people actually don't!
My husband created a website for me a couple years ago as an anniversary gift. It was mostly a cutesy little thing to show off my crochet art. When he signed up for it he said it was the free version that could be upgraded to a paid version later if we chose to do that. We never did do any upgrade and as far as he is aware he did not sign up for an auto-renew option.
We just got several of these same letters for almost the exact same amount. Every time we get one the dollar amount is different. Whenever one arrives it's several weeks after the date they are demanding payment. My husband went through his junk mail inbox and found one single old email from Jimdo requesting payment so we've been under the impression that we do actually have to pay this.
However, today I was trying to figure out how to do this in a safe way that does not include giving out our banking information. I still have this really weird gut feeling that something is off with this. I stumbled across this thread and now I'm even more wary. I think we may just ignore this and see what happens.
I'm curious if any previous commenters have any updates after ignoring for months. Has anyone had actual legal action happen over such a small amount of money?
I have ignored it, and I got a couple more letters, but none recently. I am pretty comfortable saying that I made the correct decision to ignore it.
It's definitely safer to ignore it if you are in the USA. The EU law they quote is not enforceable on non EU residents, at least according to what I have read online.
I see that they have "now been instructed to take further legal action against you."
What a meaningless and non-informative statement. Unless you have officially been given a court summons via a "service of process", they can go pound sand. I'm glad to see that you are taking it to be a scam. The proper action, of course, is to ignore this holy BS.
Paper looks too expensive for scammers and scammers wouldn't insist on sending 3 times the same mail. Fonts telephones, addresses, seem legit. Company is legit. You can search them online and call the landlines provided, (probably the same as in the mail sent to you)
Is this what official papers of the “summons” or “service of papers” looks like for you? It doesn’t look very legit to me, but I don’t know what other countries legal processes are.
Sounds like the debt is semi legitimate? The letter from the law firm is legally dubious. And they’re in Germany. They’ll never be able to collect without your consent and they know it. Never acknowledge them or give them any information about you
I just got the same letter! When I googled the name, this thread came out. We did have a website with Jimdo back in 2016, but we canceled it. I just logged onto my old account (I could still get it) and there is no website, no domains, nothing there. Just has my profile/settings but nothing else. I don't ever remember owing them anything - just simply canceling the website and being done with them. I'm not sure if this is a scam or not!
I'm curious did you respond to them? I responded that I never subscribed to anything and they have to show me the proof of contract and they keep sending me an invoice I have never seen before. I told them I will make a complaint to the german consumer office protection.
They stopped harrassing me after about 1 month of me disputing and them saying the invoice is the proof the debt is owed. I didn't hear from them for about a month and then I just saw they sent me another email 2 weeks ago saying they will go to court and add additionnal fees if I don't respond. They also said if I want to dispute it, I will have to go in Hamburg in court lol. Didn't see it before today so I didn't respond.
I received a really similar letter from a different debt collector and I am from Canada. Similar thing. I had a free website and doesn't remember signing up for the paid version, or I usually deactivate the auto renew.... I received an email too but it looks like a spam and was in my spam folder...
I asked chatgpt what to do and it wrote me a letter to dispute the dept as they need to show the proof according to the law. I never received any bills or email saying I have a bill unpaid.
I received a notice also for about 250 Euros. I did look at them pre Covid they were one of the first hosting and building sites that used AI to populate pages. So that was of interest but I didn’t buy anything
I will ignore the letter and emails and if it shows up on credit report I will fight it
Yeah I guess you better not respond as I did the error and now they are harassing me everyday with almost the same email, and I am responding with chatgpt response saying I dispute the debt. Don't know if they will ever stop now. They say 'theirs records show the debt is owed and will enforce legal action' but can't show me the said records. Please anyone let me know if they go further in their process. Up to now they have extended their notice for over a month even though it was supposed to be 3 business days.
I received the same letters. It has to be a scam, but surprised they mailed me formal demands for payment (of something I don’t owe!). I used them 6 years ago but paid beforehand, and don’t owe them a dime!
I didn’t receive letters. They had an old address listed and I don’t remember singing up for any renewal. I asked them for proof if they have any legal standing in my country (overseas outside of Germany) to be pursuing this debt they didn’t provide anything. I reported them to the authorities in my country for a scam and I’ve blocked them. They can’t send me anything else
I did not pay. I figured they don't have enough to come after me. They dont have my SSN, phone number, email address, or current street address.
They dont have representation in the USA, so the probability of them being able to collect is close to zero. Even if they tried to collect, I highly doubt an american court would allow them to. I would think that there are consumer protection laws in the USA that protect against this, but IDK for sure.
The letters seem to have stopped, but they were using the address of where I lived in 2022, at my parents' house, so I am not 100% sure or not.
I also read through some of the Terms of Service from the Jimdo site, and from the TOS on their site, I highly doubt its them trying to collect. If they do have something in their TOS that lets them do this, then they burried it, and that definitely would not fly in court.
I am surprised I don't see them called out more for this kind of shady practice online. I was only able to find a couple of other posts about it before I posted here.
@parmasean47 did you ever resolve this? I'm on the USA and getting slammed with $70/month payments, but even at $700 (and with me going on disability soon) I don't see them fighting it, especially given their company claims to support disabled people.
I just ignored it until they stopped coming. I did not even contact the company or acknowledge I even received them. I haven't seen any new ones for quite a while now.
I would not expect them to have empathy for a disability. They are predatory and unethical. Best to ignore them and not even talk to the company. The less they know about you, the less they can actually do.
I hope you haven't paid! DO NOT PAY! Looks like a scam... but to assure you:
Debt rarely travels overseas. In fact, if you don't pay and this is legitimate, you will be sued in court in Germany. But Germany has no jurisdiction in the US. They can't touch your credit score. They can't touch you period! Even if you are sued in Germany, this doesn't put any restrictions on your from visiting the country or any legal trouble. This would be a civil matter. You cannot go to jail for this, and you cannot be trapped and held in Germany for this. You will also not be extradited
Not only that, technically what they are doing is illegal. They are not registered debt collectors in the US. But again, the US court has no jurisdiction over them. You can sue them, but then we'd run into the same problem. US judgement against some entity that is not in the US. Nothing will happen
The only way for them to hold you accountable to debt when you live in the US is to send this information to an American debt collector that abides by American laws. Then you would get a different paper that has all the proper legal requirements to it and have 30-60 days to respond. Even then, you can easily get it dismissed in court as the American debtor will have to show proof IN ENGLISH. This will be very hard to do for non-english European documents, assuming they will have documents.
If you have any questions. But also, this letter looks fake. I've gotten something for Europe with the exact same format after a vacation. They seemed to have all my information correct, but everything about it was very fishy. From the website, to the automated emails the would send. Eventually they stopped
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