TeamViewer sends collection agency if missed emails, even after making payment | Hacker News Reader

TeamViewer sends collection agency if missed emails, even after making payment

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63 pointsvibhavsinha24 comments

If I log-in to my TeamViewer account, there is no indication of what a "license" is or if I have a pending payment. When I tried using TeamViewer with a client, it said license is no longer valid, so I purchased again. I don't understand how they justify such practices.

I am the tweet author. Not sure how such things are legal. I am scared from getting threat of legal action from a foreign entity. This is what I received from the collection agency: https://imgur.com/a/ma5ukLP

Yeah, if you're outside the EU, you can safely ignore this with no consequences. There is absolutely no international debt collection for 30 euros between countries. Honestly even if you were local I highly doubt anyone is going to initiate 'legal proceedings' over such a small amount

Thanks for your assuring words. It is ~ €300 which is the price of their annual business plan. I redacted the precision and decimals to avoid identifiable info when uploading media to imgur.

Gotcha. I mean even here in the United States, if someone won a court judgement for $300 there's probably no way that they could enforce it. So, while I am not an attorney lol, I am very confident that it can't be enforced with thousands of miles and a few continents between the parties :) It costs them nothing to send an e-mail and see if you'll maybe pay

> Gotcha. I mean even here in the United States, if someone won a court judgement for $300 there's probably no way that they could enforce it.

If they're at the point where they've won the judgment, they've got a fairly easy way to enforce it: wage garnishment. Since they've won the judgment but you still refuse to pay, the next (very easy) step is to get a court order for wage garnishment, after which your employer's payroll processor (like ADP for example) will simply start taking the money before your checks even get deposited. <insert obligatory IANAL statement here>

Despite what you may read online, this is basically never going to happen for a small claims court judgement these days. You're left on your own to collect a judgement there, the court doesn't get involved, the magistrates who hear those cases typically don't have that level of power, etc. Also they no longer show up on your credit report.

'Real' court and not small claims is a completely different story, the court will help you enforce a judgement with an order and wage garnishment is possible

Having been garnished for an amount (thanks to fraud that went unnoticed for too long) that many would consider to be too small, I have to disagree with you.

Being hounded by debt collection agencies for months on end is miserable even if you don't end up needing to pay.

I changed to AnyDesk looong ago, more OS's supported and the "no commercial" version does not kill your connection after 10 minutes. When i start to smell greed i change as fast as i can.

To be honest if you are in a country outside of EU just ignore it and look for another provider. The collection agency won't do anything more than send emails for 30 bucks and they can't influence your creditscore.

That looks like a spam/phishing email. Is that a real company?

TeamViewer support has confirmed that they "transferred the case" to this agency since I didn't respond to their email.(Screenshot of their response in Twitter thread)

While they were doing this, their website portal showed no indication of any pending payment and let me purchase their business plan.

Nuts! That's shady! I hope you get it resolved or find another app that does what team viewer does.

Maybe one of these will suit your use case. https://alternativeto.net/software/teamviewer/?license=free

good idea to make it public, companies often use fear to illegally collect money, but they themselves are afraid of public opinion and the possible shit storm that might follow. Injustices must always be exposed publicly, it is the only weapon we have left against the corporations.

How do you even go into debt with something like TeamViewer.

Why not cancel the new invoice and pay the old one as they said?

They are not asking for direct payment. They want me to pay the collection agency. I am not going to make an international payment to some random company that I have no idea about. I suspect they want me to do this because closing internally with the company will mean admitting to the agency that they sold a bad debt.

> I am not going to make an international payment to some random company that I have no idea about.

Why not? You do have an idea about them: TeamViewer asked you to pay them.

> I suspect they want me to do this because closing internally with the company will mean admitting to the agency that they sold a bad debt.

Maybe. Maybe that's just how it's easier for them.

What a stupid suggestion. If a company cannot be trusted to fix a simple billing issue, I sure as hell wouldn't trust their choice of random foreign company that for some reason they want me to send money to to fix their mistake.

This screams of dodginess and shoddy unfriendly customer service.

You're being rather unfriendly yourself.

Why not credit the new invoice, and mark the old one paid as the client asked?

Because they are incompetent.

On top of all the reasons already given, keep in mind the company is asking for additional late fees.

Sure, just don't pay those.

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