Blatantly lied to me!

A campaign with text marketer (www.textmarketer.co.uk) was set up by an employee who then went onto leave the company. Although we were only using it for a month long campaign, we subsequently realised that the employee had made a mistake and set it up as an on going subscription service that took money out of our account every quarter and we had been continually paying rental without ever using the service for well over a year.

Hoping to appeal to their more generous side I phoned to explain our mistake and see if there was scope for any type of refund (even a token amount). I thought this was reasonable as having worked for a competitor I knew they wouldn't have incurred any cost for us having this very obscure keyword lying dormant. Anyway, after calling and explaining the situation he didn't agree that it was a reasonable request very clearly told me "No!"

Now even though I don't agree with how they do business, I still accept their decision not to refund anything. However, what is completely unacceptable is for him to justify his stand point by blatantly lying and telling me it was because he has to pay to rent each individual keyword. When I told him I was surprised to hear this and I thought he would only pay to rent the short code (the number you text to), he then lied again saying that text marketer didn't own the short code. (Where does it state in the T&C's that they use a 3rd party?) It's only when I told him that I had worked for a competitor so I knew he was incorrect that he tried to back track and told me that he was 'unsure how it all worked'. Okay, so he was senior enough to make a decision of my refund, but didn't know how it all worked! (Incidentally on linkedin he lists company size as 'just him').

If he's so willing to lie about the how the business works, it makes me question other areas of the business. It's certainly not the type of company that I would want to trust my customer private data with.