ComplaintsforStoner Enterprises, Inc. t/a Culligan Water

• Initial Complaint

  12/28/2023

  Complaint Type:

  Customer Service Issues

  Status:

  Unresolved

  More info

  THIS IS A DEMAND FOR adequate assurance of future performance. This is a formal notice of breach of contract on your part. COMPLAINTS WILL BE FILED with every application agency and regulatory commission in the state of Maryland privately, publicly, state, local, and nationally. I will take the time to leave comments about this incident on every social media site you and your affiliates may have. This is wrong! I paid you on time and I demand my service. Not when you get ready to look at it but when it is died per our contractual agreement. I have sent all my payments to a law firm that handles payment disputes. After their forensic accountant reviews, they will get back to me. I am confident that you have mishandled my account multiple times, delayed or denied my service and cost me a lot more time , effort , and expense I was patient the first three times. But no more. If needed I will sue for every dollar, every hour, associated expense, it cost me and attorney and court expenses. I think your company is in need of media exposure, so I contacted several media outlets and will send them the lawyers forensic reports. Thank you for wasting my valuable little time I have to spend with my family over the holidays. You are not deserving of owning /brokering a lease company service! You are a disappointment and disgrace to businesses who serve this state with integrity. But you will not be the first dirty company I have brought to Jesus and to the people, unfortunately! Please be advised- (1) A lease contract imposes an obligation on each party that the other’s expectation of receiving due performance will not be impaired. Unfair or Deceptive Trade Practices I am not behind with any payments. You are denying me the service that is in my contract. This is considered as a breach of contract. Further let's be clear. I am not asking you to do anything but your contracted service, in which correct billing and payment application should be included therein.

  Business response

  01/03/2024

  Good morning,

  I wish to respond to the attached complaint.  Simply stated, this customer has a history of slow payment along with missing some month's payments.  With that said here is some historical aspects of this account.  This customer entered into a lease agreement with our organization on 6/9/2021.  The term of this lease agreement is for a period of 48-months, and is for multiple pieces of water treatment equipment.  The customer receives the use of the water treatment equipment along with certain regular services in exchange for a monthly fee.  This monthly fee is invoice the 24th of each month and payment is requested to be received by our office on or before the 15th of the following month.  Each month's billing is for the following month's lease period.  Should payment for any given month not be received prior to the following month's billing, then the amount still owed is subject to a one-time late fee charge.  All of this is clearly defined in the full terms and conditions of the sales contract agreement along with the additional 48-month lease terms and conditions, which is signed and agreed upon by the customer.  Sometime early May 2023 this account was brought to my attention.  Up to this point I had not been involved with this account.  In response to the customer's insistence and request, I personally performed a full and complete audit of this account on 5/11/2023.  The ultimate conclusion of that audit resulted in the fact that the account maintained a total balance due equal to two (2) month's of the monthly fee.  This is after we did apply the payment that was received on 5/11/2023.  Due to this fact, there remained at least one (1) month fee that was at the minimum 31-60 days past due.  When this happens all service for the account are froze until the account is brought current, meaning amounts due do not exceed 30 days.  This has been fully explained to the customer as well.  The hand written audit that I performed on 5/11/2023 was emailed to the customer for review, and was stated that if they found any mistakes or unapplied payments that they can show us as being made, we would make the appropriate adjustments on the account.  No response was given by the customer, leaving me and my organization with the impression that the audit was in fact correct.  Then is July of 2023, the customer called in requesting salt to be delivered, which is part of the contract agreement.  However, the account was at least 31-60 days in the red, therefore we were not able to make the deliveries as per the customers demand.  The customer was again referred to me at that time, which I was contacted by them.  I was very clear that the delivery could not be scheduled until the account was in the less than 30 day period.  The customer agreed to make the necessary payment at that time, and the salt was ultimately delivered on 7/31/23.  Nothing more was hear from this customer until 12/27/2023, where a salt delivery was again requested.  Due to the past issues with this account and this customer, the account is now flagged to refer this customer to me at all times for any reasons.  I briefly spoke with the customer.  At which time the customer was insistent our accounting is wrong and that she owes us nothing, yet our records reflected something to the contrary, and was at least 31-60 days past due.  I was threatened to be sued and so forth, just as this complaint reads.  Therefore, I took time from my schedule yet again to perform another audit on this account, and I resulted in the very same findings as I had in the past.  This time the customer did provide me with a partial payment history that went back to 4/17/2023.  My audit in fact concluded that all payments as provided were properly and timely applied to the account, yet a past due balance still remained.  In the provided payment history it also showed a pending payment for 1/6/2024, which is a Saturday.  However, we do not account for any payment until it is posted to our account.  When I initially tried to explain this to the customer all I received in return was, "I am too busy for this.  Just email me.", then the call was ended quickly.  Every time that I try to verbally speak with this customer, all I get is the same thing.  A very hurried response and never wants to hear our side.  All this customer wants to do is make unjust demands and threats, and claims that our accounting is wrong.  Yet, I have not yet received anything back from the customer that can show and justify each and every payment made over the history of the account, even though several people in our organization have stated that we will make any corrections if we did in fact make any mistakes in applying payments.  When I expressed that we will not be scheduling the demanded salt delivery and why, I get a very abrupt and rude response in stating that we are in breach of contract.  After further review of the contract terms, it is stated that the salt deliveries will only be made once every six (6) months.  This means that the next eligible salt delivery for this account would not be until February 1, 2024.  We will of course schedule that delivery at that time provided that the account is not considered past due at that time.  We have in fact performed our duties as per the contract agreement.  As a matter of fact, this account has been beyond 60 days past due in times past.  We did not terminate the contract as the contract states that we could.  We did not do that because we make every reasonable effort to work with our customers to the best of our ability.  If the customer can get the account back to the current status and maintain it that way, then we would be having no issues whatsoever.  Once the account is back to the current status then we will service it fully as per the contract agreement.  However, due to the threats and other rude and unreasonable responses from this customer, the account will remain on a permanent status that all services in the future MUST be approved by me prior.  Due to potential privacy reasons, I will not be providing copies of my two (2) manual audits.  The customer does have both of them and can be provided by them should they choose to.

  Customer response

  01/04/2024

  Complaint: ********
  
  I am rejecting this response because: First my name does not appear on this document that this liar refers to our contracted agreement. Next there are so many lies in this statement that I cannot possibly take time now to address them all. In fact, this entire statement is "make believe" and at this point will require legal intervention. Beginning with the falsified document and in-depth lies, told in his statement. The good news is we have it in writing and will use it both for legal and media purposes. This is not a threat it is a promise. I will contact you with documents or my attorney’s information within 30 days or on or before Feb 3, 2024.
  The dates he gave you and the terms of the contract are not as stated or shown in the falsified document that is attached. My husband will buy our water because of their failure to deliver and breach of contract. Anyway, they drop it off outside without coordinating and we must haul it in and down the steps anyway. It cost twice as much as Stoner. So, this is no service AND a breach of contract.
  We purchased this home in June 2021 from the former Fredricks County Commissioner and US Rep for ethics committee. He custom built the home in 2015 and was the only owner. He loved the house like we do. And while able took excellent care of the home. Unfortunately, his late wife took ill while living here and he couldn't maintain it as he had in the past. She passed away last year. The water here was horrific! It is well water. In fact, we could not use it or move in until the problem was resolved.  We have all the original paperwork from the well including every piece of equipment that came to the home and the local certified well water company we had to come out and do an inspection.  
  

  This is where Culligan/Stoner broker comes in and does an inspection. Both my husband, a Federal Law Enforcement Supervisor and I, a Real Estate Broker at the time with one of the largest brokerages in Frederick County were available for all the inspections along with company management. I have the original paperwork and agreement and signed agreement and what he uploaded here is not that. We are very experienced and highly intelligent. We will note this as condescending, discriminating and disturbing lies in this response.
  In summary
  Culligan agreed to a lot in the contract by service and by equipment they did not deliver. 
  We have the actual report from Culligan and the local water company that it took months to bring the water to a safe level and not within 48 hours promised in the contract we signed.
  Stoner told us that the equipment the former owner used we did not need because it did not work. It was relatively new equipment. They disconnected it and took our equipment away.
  When their expensive equipment solution did not work, they bought us back another of the same equipment they took from our home and tried to charge us full price for our own unit. 
  Culligan made 9 trips to our house before we achieved acceptable water safety levels as required by government code. In the interim they charged us every month when their system was not working and charged us for all our own equipment.  They showed my account as consistently delinquent. I had them sign for every visit and for every report from the inspections they conducted. I also have periodic follow up reports from the board of health Frederick County and Frederick County certified water and well inspections. Although Stoner wrote we would not need to do a well inspection because their equipment would take care of the VISIBLE IRON WATER AND THE SULFUR SMELL AND TASTE, we had the well-treated anyway and have those reports as well. The inspector put in writing that the claims Stoner made on their contract were falsified and it was impossible to achieve those stated results in that stated time.
  The owner of the brokerage for Stoner told us we would not be charged until the water reached an acceptable level using some of our own stolen and resale equipment that happened. Months and visits later where we were forced to live outside of our home, which I have proof that finally happened. 
  It took another couple of months for the manager Kevin to work with billing to finally delete all the billing during a period when we could not use the water. And to delete the charge for all our own equipment they sold us back. I have all the emails and receipts as proof and I have witnesses as well including my husband and the former owner, the certified water inspector, and Frederick County Health Dept.
  We are billed every month for some equipment we already own.
  We never missed a payment on time. Our billing cycle changed because it was agreed that our billing date would change to the first date of service. So, once we thought it was all cleared up for several months. Then I started getting letters stating I was 60-90 days in arrears. Furious with this company's incompetence I wrote a letter to them and denied any late payments, but I exercised patience once again and worked with some person who claimed to be over the company billing Stephanie, I have all the emails and communications. The result of that is once again, Stoner owed me reimbursement for overcharging fees and late fees and for mishandling payments.  We agreed on the amount my account with be reimbursed and moved forward. This time only for two months and I got another letter for past due amount. I called Stephanie and a few days later we got together and determined that she had failed to remove a charge we agreed I did not owe. She apologized and removed it, and we were off and running again. A few months later I noticed my bill was higher than the usual amount. When I contacted the company, they said it was for a filter. I explained that I do not use that kind of filter. After checking it out I got another sorry, my bad he brought the wrong part. Even when they removed it from the bill, they would charge me a late fee because it would not be removed until the next billing cycle that reflected, I owed a partial bill plus the current bill and now displays 60 days late when in fact the current bill was not yet due.
  It is simply exhausting and overwhelming dealing with the company. The latest scenario is the last time they came to replace the bulb and charged for the bulb and for the service/labor fee to replace it. When I came home to discover they charged us for this, and our contract clearly states this is included. Here it goes; another “My Bad, sorry”. Again, they removed it from our account but not without posting our account as though it was 30-60 days late when the current bill had been paid.

  
  Yes, it is so bad that I insistence on a personal accounting audit. You should see what he sent me! It looks like it was done by a 3rd grader and it’s incorrect and not consistent with my bank records which I sent them on three separate occasions. Where is his record of accounting to support his lies that I am a slow payer? Just more lies intended to upset me and waste my time. This company will be accountable!  I suggested accounting software they can purchase.  I do not have this kind of time to deal with these people. After my attorney’s forensic accountant has completed their review and I meet with him for his advisement on how we will move forward I may be able to send my documents to you at that time. This was this company’s final attempt to settle this matter without legal intervention. Please be advised that I filed this complaint with CFBP, MD AG, and three news media stations. And based on information, belief, and the lies told in this statement I will also file against MD Brokers license for straight out lying and presenting a falsified document.
  Please advise this crooked snake sales broker that because he is a pathetic liar, I can only communicate with them in writing and anything they say can and will be used against them in a court of law. He may put his settlement offer in writing, only. And if he is representing my account, he better know what that is from its inception or he should turn it over to the owner to get a person of integrity to handle this matter. I see nothing! Not even a signature on the contract. This is not the contract! Just lies and more lies!
  
  
  

  
  
  Sincerely,
  
  ********* *****

  Customer response

  01/09/2024

  No Integrity- No payment receipts, No unpaid invoices, you cannot even show a signed contract.

  Please be advised that we did not receive any communication from you on this matter as promised here. Once again , you lied.  I did not receive anything from you. You lied in your response to BBB that you sent me an accounting sheet that displayed my payments in accordance with your system. We are still waiting on the account status as of Dec 27, 2023. Please be advised that my filing complaints against you does not relieve you of your contracted obligation to service my account and to answer any questions requested directly to me. Once again, you chose to ignore my request.  You lied on your BBB response that you provided three different spreadsheets. I received only one (that was written in 3rd grade writing) from you since inception of this account. Please provide these alleged payment history reports.  On December 27, 2023 we had no outstanding or unpaid balance on my account. 
  
  
  You admitted in the response that you changed the terms of our original agreement without notice or consent from me. You said my account has been permanently turned over to collections and anything that I am contracted to receive I must contact you in order to receive it. This is not what we contracted for with Stoner.  A copy of this  email will be provided for legal purposes.

  
  

  Business response

  01/16/2024

  It was stated that I was not able to provide a contract with her name on it.  I originally redacted the names from the contract for privacy reasons.  However, here is the non-redacted exact copy of the same contract.  Clearly her name is at the top of the page, and it appears as if the husband had signed this contract.  We do not accept mediation at this time simply because there is nothing to mediate.  I have offered to review any and all payment documents that she could provide.  I have even stated that I would correct any and all mistakes, if made, provided she could show us documentation accordingly.  As for payment receipts, this customer pays online and their bank records or credit card statements will provide every receipt that she needs.  Not to mention that I have already provided the customer with two different hand written account audits to reflect each and every payment, account credit, account adjustment or account charge that our records show.  She may feel that it was written by a third grader, but I assure you it was not.  She has been given plenty of information, and has provided us with no information that would either confirm or deny our records, or her demands!  As for her salt delivery, she is eligible for her next semi-annual delivery in February provided her account is not 31-60 days past due or more.  As a reminder, her account is currently reflecting and equivalent of one month's rent remaining due, and the next billing cycle comes on 01/25/2024.  Should the current account balance go unpaid after the said billing date, then the account would again go into the 31-60 day range or more.  As said before, we will have no issues servicing her account as the contract states provided the account remains at the less than 30 days good standing.

  Business response

  01/16/2024

  Better Business Bureau:

  I would like to reject the offer of Mediation for complaint ID ********

  It was stated that I was not able to provide a contract with her name on it. I originally redacted the names from
  the contract for privacy reasons. However, here is the non-redacted exact copy of the same contract. Clearly
  her name is at the top of the page, and it appears as if the husband had signed this contract. We do not accept
  mediation at this time simply because there is nothing to mediate. I have offered to review any and all payment
  documents that she could provide. I have even stated that I would correct any and all mistakes, if made,
  provided she could show us documentation accordingly. As for payment receipts, this customer pays online and
  their bank records or credit card statements will provide every receipt that she needs. Not to mention that I
  have already provided the customer with two different hand written account audits to reflect each and every
  payment, account credit, account adjustment or account charge that our records show. She may feel that it was
  written by a third grader, but I assure you it was not. She has been given plenty of information, and has
  provided us with no information that would either confirm or deny our records, or her demands! As for her salt
  delivery, she is eligible for her next semi-annual delivery in February provided her account is not 31-60 days past
  due or more. As a reminder, her account is currently reflecting and equivalent of one month's rent remaining
  due, and the next billing cycle comes on 01/25/2024. Should the current account balance go unpaid after the
  said billing date, then the account would again go into the 31-60 day range or more. As said before, we will have
  no issues servicing her account as the contract states provided the account remains at the less than 30 days
  good standing.

  In addition, we have considered this mediation request, and have felt that we must decline in principle.  We do not feel that anything will come out of mediation once we reviewed the numerous personal attacks that have been made by this customer.  She has even included many people in an email chain that has absolutely nothing to do with this organization whatsoever.  It appears that she just randomly searched for emails that MAY be related to the ownership of this company.  One email address is somehow going to my wife, which she is not involved in this business at all, and she feels harassed and threatened by these emails.  This customer has already placed several slanderous comments on various social medias with many claims that cannot be substantiated.  She has nothing but strong demands and does not hesitate to do the naming calling game when she does not get what she demands.  As stated many times prior, we will continue to service her account just as we do all accounts.  Provide us with any payment documentation that can be verified that may truly show justification to her dispute, and we will correct it immediately.  She simply has not done that, but yet still sends out the personal attacks.  Stop sending the attacks and send us something that you believe supports your demands!  We will not, in principle, stand for being bullied and harassed.  She has threatened to sue us several times.  If she does, she does.  We have no reason to be concerned with that.  So again. we say no to mediation.  As far as we know, if mediation does not go her way, the attacks and attempts to bully will continue.

  Thank you.

  Customer response

  01/19/2024

  The attached documents have lines drawn through the picture to prevent Mr. ****** from Forgery and copying. Mr. ****** is correct he has nothing to mediate. It is clear he lied, cheated, stole my equipment, and sold it back to me, then when I caught them, they reimbursed that and added it to my monthly rental fee, ******* and coned me into renting an entire expensive system that we likely did not need because the problem only resolved when they return my original equipment back. They breached the contract multiple times and told me it’s my job to keep his accounting records, created serious product liability, emotional stress and hardships, physical health issues. He has been condescending, uncooperative, harassing and discriminating. With this falsified writing he now accuses me of providing data I cannot substantiate, further and most important he supplied forgeries as document to you as a contract agreement with me. And lied and forged my husband’s name. This is now a criminal. We will prosecute and sue to the full extent of the law. I knew he had no integrity, but this is Jail Time. We are in process of filing the police and FBI Reports. Mr. ****** should have available both pf the originals that he uploaded to this website and any other signature documents in his possession he claims to have our names on them. We are people of integrity, and I will not be threatened and *******. You will not complete illegal acts of forgery and get away with it!
  All this about emails and social media are just threats to try to intimidate me from prosecuting him. He does not scare me. I am moving forward as quickly as our schedules permit with full civil and criminal litigation. 
  I have all my documents, book, pamphlet, notes, emails, credit report inquiry, phone calls, numbers, dates, and time, including bank records and canceled checks from three banks. I can prove everything I said in fact, there is so much more that will come out in the media reports and via the attorneys. We will ask for the originals of everything I have and everything he has including the forged documents he presented on this site. You are free to publish this record to the public. I will also send you copies of the police report, FBI should be available soon. I will let you know when I secure dates for the TV calls for help. Yes, I am going to expose this corruption with ******. The forgery in my husband's name has gone too far. They are unscrupulous and do not deserve to be in business. We will turn in these reports to the complaint with the EPA applicable agencies against their license. It will take me awhile, but I assure you they will pay for these criminals and civil attacks on us.
  We ask that you share this information with any media and legal authorities that will be investigating this matter. Thank you.

  As far as his wife, he is likely lying and just trying to be intimidating, but my heart goes out to her because being married to him must be punishment enough!

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