Educational Funding Company

EFC has been debiting our account since October after my husband called to cancel over the summer. Our last payment was to be September 2019. My husband called and gave 30 days notice---when I called today they had no recollection of the phone call. I'm surprised because he was hung up on during that call and then called back to speak to a manager (RAJ) who claimed that everything was "taken care of" and it was clear as day on his account that he cancelled on July 30th 2019. We have been debited every 16th or 17th of the month since---we've had to dispute the charges with our credit card company every month since then. This is a large sum of money coming out of our account every month for a service that we terminated months ago! I was told today to send over a letter requesting to cancel the automatic chargers. Unfortunately after reading reviews about this company, I may have to go a different route since we are protected under the Fair Credit Billing Act.

I, ***, wanted to cancel my monthly martial arts membership for $108 on August 13th, 2019 so I called EFC and was directed to a lady named Yetti. She told me to submit a termination letter with my case number *** to the service email for EFC so I did the same day. I asked her if I will need to pay anything and she said no.

Come August 19th, I was charged for the membership so I disputed the transaction on my credit card. I then received a letter stating that I owed the money that I disputed so I called again and spoke to Yetti again, she told me to forward the email to her directly which I did. I asked her if I needed to do anything else to get this taken care of and again she said no.

I had thought it to be over with until my girlfriend, ***, received two different notifications over text on her cell phone. They hadn't contacted me about it and decided to contact my emergency contact instead. I then wrote EFC a letter about the whole thing and sent it via certified mail, asking for the charges to be dropped because my termination was sent before the date that the payment was being taken out. I sent them copies of the email and the texts that were sent.

Today I received the certified mail receipt back, showing they had received it on 9/9/2019. I also received a letter EFC sent to me on the same day they received my letter. The letter said this is my final notice and they will be contacting their legal department if it is not paid for.

Educational Funding Company ("EFC") is the billing company for ***, my son's martial arts school. My son is no longer a student at the school. His contract ended May 2019. According to EFC, I was to give EFC 30 days notice that we were not renewing contract. Initially I failed to do that because I was not aware of that requirement, and complained that EFC took $137.81 out of my account without my consent. This was the payment for June 2019. It was explained to me that the required email I sent stating non-renewal of contract would not cover the June 2019 payment, which I agreed with. So I withdrew my complaint, and let the June payment of $137.81 stand. Of course I have proof that payment was made and received by them.
I received an email stating my ticket with them was closed, and a telephone call stating my business with them had concluded.

Now in September, I receive an email from them stating I owe them $137.81 for the June 2019 payment. I told them I do not. My account is paid in full and closed, and our business is now terminated. I re-confirmed with my bank that a payment was made to EFC for $137.81 in June 2019.
I informed EFC of this, and asked them to stop harassing me.

They responded I still owe them that June 2019 payment, and will continue to contact me until I make that payment. I made the June 2019 payment, and they continue to harass me.
I am not responding to any further communications from them.

Payment was made, my bank confirms that, I have their communication that our business is settled, and that's all there is to it.

My husband and I contacted our Karate Studio to cancel our sons membership for Little Dragons(he's only 5) due to losing my job back in April. Initially when we signed up in the End of March Early April we were told that cancelling was fine, we would be able to see if the gym was a good fit for us, and if our son was a good fit for their community as well. When signing the paperwork I was not shown the back of our agreement, never made aware that we were signing a 12 month contract attempting to lock us in, or that the only way to seemingly cancel was to move away far enough that driving would be an issue. So when we called to explain the unfortunate issue of my loss of employment the karate instructor told us he would freeze our payments for three months and we should keep coming to karate, then if I didn't find a job we would cancel. In the meantime life gets harder we seek out our cancellation and were told we have to contact the billing company. We provided them with documentation showing my loss of employment, and letter from my previous employment showing last date of work. Raj one of their employees told my husband he was taking care of our cancellation and if there was any issues with the cancellation he would contact us back. This conversation took place early July, now August 21st we wake to our bank account being debited for $209 for the Educational Funding Company without our knowledge or consent. No one called us back saying our cancellation was denied, or that the payments would begin again on this date. Being unemployed, desperately looking for work, this kind of charge to our account is something that can not happen, it will financially destroy our family. It is the difference between getting groceries and not getting groceries. I immediately called the previous Rep. Raj numerous times, and no surprise there was no answer or call back. I found an 800# online and called speaking with a woman named Puyna(?) saying that the August charge that was not approved was a "fee" and now she was cancelling my membership. I told her I did not authorize that charge, and was never told of any fees, as far as I knew my membership was cancelled already. I then asked for written documentation showing the account closed, she confirmed my email, but refused to send the email while I was on the phone saying " I have to double check something, I will not be sending it while you're on the phone", nor would she confirm that no other charges would be coming out of my account. She would not address that fact that they took money unauthorized from my account, and would not give me a time frame for when my cancellation would actually take place. These people have taken additional money from account without authorization, they have conspired with the local karate studio to entrap people in contracts that were never presented to the customer, and then they lie about when or how they will follow up to assist the customer. This is the worst customer service I have ever had in my entire life. This company enjoys scamming hard working people out of their money, using shady business practices to cover it all up. My family jumped through their ridiculous hoops to prove we are in a financial hardship only for them to steal money from us and continue to deceive us on the validity of our cancellation. Now we have to constantly worry about money being taken from us that we desperately need to buy food, and pay bills.

I have been contacting the martial arts studio, *** Academy, which this business represents to cancel my membership and stop charges and collections. The business has been unwilling to comply. I am cancelling my membership because I have not participated in classes and I have a right to cancel the renewal of my contract. I was never informed verbally or in writing about the renewal of my contract, thus a contract was continued without my consent. My original contract states that thirty days before the completion of the one year agreement, I would be notified by mail, or email that my yearly contract was about to be renewed. I received neither mail nor email about the renewal and had no opportunity to cancel. In addition, their contract is very strict and they give consumers very little ability to adjust their membership. I believe they exhibit harmful business practices towards consumers.

I have signed up my daughter to attend martial arts class at *** (DBA *** located at *** in Gaithersburg, Maryland in December 2017. The monthly payments for these classes in the amount of $129 were collected through Educational Funding Company, Inc (EFC) located at 4740 Chevy Chase Drive in Chevy Chase, Maryland.
In November of 2018, I have received a renewal notice from EFC indicating that the contract is up for a renewal at the rate of $132.87. Due to variety of circumstances, we were not interested in renewal and wanted to cancel the existing agreement. After multiple attempts to reach EFC and inform them of cancellation were unsuccessful, I spoke with another parent who was also cancelling and the provided me an email address and the name of the person to contact to cancel this contract.

I reached out Susi D (A***), who is the client development specialist at EFC on 11/28/18 to inform EFC that I do not plan to renew and I want the account closed. After much back and forth with Ms. D (A***), who was not very responsive unless you continue to call and email her to remind of the issue, we came to a conclusion that account will be cancelled after 1/20/19.

Today, 1/23/19, I see a bank withdrawal of $132.87. It looks like no one has cancelled the contract and they just keep withdrawing the money when they were explicitly told to cancel the renewal.

On December 5, 2018, I instructed Education Funding Company Inc. to discontinue my tuition at a *** because I would not be taking classes for some months.
I spoke with *** who was very nice about it and wrote that he would take care of it. Despite that, $99 was taken out my account. When I complained *** said that it would be a credit. I did not ask for a credit, I asked for the payment to stop.

January 9th, 2019, Educational Funding took out $102...making the total I want to be returned $201.
MANY STUDENT HAVE COMPLAINED ABOUT THIS HAPPENING. I HAVE STUDIED WITH A GOOD TEACHER FOR 10 YEARS BUT WILL LEAVE THAT SCHOOL BECAUSE OF THESE DECEPTIVE PRACTICES.
ALSO, Revdex.com LISTS EDUCATIONAL FUNDING, CHEVY CHASE AS HAVING A B- RATING WITH Revdex.com, BUT EDUCATIONAL FUNDING CONTINUES TO SHOW A+ RATING WHICH MAKES PEOPLE THINK THEY ARE A TRUSTWORTHY COMPANY.

This company has gone out of its way to trap customers into unfair billing policies. I have been trying to reach this company to cancel my account since October 15th. Each time I call I am told I would receive a call back and next step and Susi never called to confirm my account was cancelled. They tried to charge me a cancellation fee that I have in writing was waived and continued to ignore my calls so they could charge me an additional months fee.

I spoke with Susi's manager Raj who told me my account could have been cancelled without hte fee and without the 60 day cancellation charges but Susi denied this. It wasnt until I refused to get off the phone line would they do anything.

Its been 3 weeks and over 8 phone calls to get this completed. I would hate for anyone else to need to go through this as its utterly ridiculous and unfair.

This company refused to cancel my sons tuition when I stated I did not authorize any more payments to be withdrawn from my account. Then they sent me the private financial information including bank account number, routing number, and social secuirty number of someone else via email

I was injured while participating in a "6-Week Challenge" at *** (***) on 6.13.18 and had previously signed a contract on 6/4/18 for a course at *** that was to start on 8.5.18 with billing handled by the Educational Funding Company.

I requested a cancellation of said contract in writing and over the phone on 6/18/18, and neither *** nor EFC have honored the cancellation request that was sent 7 weeks before the course was to start, each party referring me to the other whenever I have attempted to address the matter over the phone or in writing by email and by USPS Certified Mail.

As of today, 9/11/18, I have complied with all the requirements for the cancellation of the contract to be processed even though the contract was incorrectly filled out by the Director of *** to begin with, and the billing company is claiming that the sole agent that can initiate the cancellation is the *** Director, and that billing under contract terms is effective even though staff at EFC has already informed me that the billing contract was supposed to begin when the course was to start on 8/5/18, and not back on 6/4/18, therefore my initial cancellation request posted on 6/18/18 should have been honored in good faith.

I have contacted EFC multiple times about this issue in order to have it resolved, but they keep sending me back to the *** Director, and he in turn has not called back even though he promised to do so when I called him in early September. The billing company keeps changing the language of the terms of the contract when I speak with them on the phone, so after an initial complaint to the Revdex.com against the *** now I'm having to file a complaint against the billing company because I believe they are stalling so that they can continue billing me and adding late fees to the account for profit and the contract is "invalid" because the description of the course in Page 1 refers to "a period commencing 8/5/18, and ending on 8/5/18", which does not make sense.

I signed a contract for a gym in southern New Jersey when I lived in Fishtown, PA so I was about 20 minutes from the gym that I signed up for. I had some relationship problems and had to move out of the house that I was living at in Fishtown and I ended up >25 miles from the gym. I notified the gym owner that I had to cancel my contract due to having moved and I started receiving late payment notices.

This company is trying to accuse me of owing *** $136, and I don't even use this service. I cancelled it a long time ago, havent been there in 2 months.

Education Funding Company does the billing for a martial arts school I used to attend. My contract ended 3/5/2018. On 4/5/2018 the fee was debited from my account. I tried getting a refund from the school, and they informed me they would need to get in touch with the billing company. Finally after a second attempt with no response, I filed a claim with my bank. In the middle of June I receive a letter education funding that my account was delinquent. I attempted to call but had no luck getting through so I sent an email which I included my contract showing the last debit to be 3/5/18, a clip of my bank statement showing they did take the money, and the letter they sent me. I followed up with a call and was told I would get a call back. A few days later I called them back and the rep made it seem that I need to speak to the person I initially spoke with. I let the person know that I am not going to wait to speak to someone else. Then I ask a few more questions and the representative says hold on, and without notice transfers me to a voice mail. I left a message but did not get a call back. My complaint has to do with the fact that they A) took money they were not authorized, and B) they are sending me delinquent notices for not paying a bill that I was not responsible for even though they took the payment from my account.

I signed my 3 children up for karate lessons at a local establishment, *** , in Amite, LA in October of 2015 and was not informed my checking account information was skimmed off my original check and given without my consent to Education Funding Company. EFC has billed my bank account for over 31 months resulting in me losing $7657.00. Some of you are asking yourselves how I allowed so many charges to come out of my account. The check I used to pay for the first month of lessons and uniforms was written out of a bank account I use very rarely. The karate establishment took it and said nothing about automatic billing, billing dates, billing amounts, or who their billing processor was. I assumed I would be paying with a paper check for each month of lessons. If they would have told me this I would have been looking for these charges on my account. Secondly, I only keep money in it to pay my student loans and a few other bills. It has large amounts of money coming and going out each month and is not meant for daily use. There could be months that go by where I do not look at this account. Also, EFC charges came over stating they were for Student Education Tuition or Student Education Fund???? These charges said nothing about karate or the original business I signed up with. I often over looked the charges as a school fee for my husband or a student loan payment. Also, I have been trying to save for my own children's college tuition and thought many of these fees were legitimate charges from my investment planner.

When I finally *** EFC and called them directly earlier this month this was the first time I had heard of their business. The person I spoke with was polite but stated that I had to contact the business owner to cancel the account and collect any fraudulent charges. The person also stated that I had 2 children signed up for Karate lessons which is erroneous as I have 3 children. I did call the business owner, ***. He acted like I was crazy to ask for a refund and told me if I wanted the billing stopped I'd have to do it myself. He also told me I had signed up for a health club membership with EFC and him which I did not. I signed up for Karate lessons. I did call EFC back and they hung up on me when I requested to cancel the billing. I have been informed by the karate business owner, ***, that he has requested my account be closed.
After my personal research and reading other reviews of EFC's business practices with local gyms and other Karate establishments I have come to the conclusion that karate institutions such as *** work in collusion with their billing partner Educational Fund Company to lure parents and relatives into a billing trap requiring them to pay hundredd to thousands of dollars in fraudulent fees. The initial check I gave ***'s I was told was for the cost of uniforms and lessons for the first month. Then I was asked to sign a statement about billing which did state I was to pay for lessons for 6 Months and after that had the option to stop billing but would be automatically renewed if I did nothing. It did not state that my bank account information would be taken from my check and used for ACH transactions against my account. It also did not state who was going to be billing my account. It did not state how much would be billed each month. It did not state what day monies would be removed from my account. I fully expected to be writing paper checks for karate classes as they clearly had no problems taking my first check and deceptively removing my banking information. It was not until later that I was informed that there is a second part to the *** billing agreement written for/by EFC located in the back of the student handbook given to my minor children. This information was conveniently not disclosed with me and it is here that one will find Educational Fund Company (EFC) will be billing the parent's automatically. But again it states nothing about needing a voided check, a date billing will, how much the payments are for etc, etc. etc. It is a baiting tactic that EFC uses along with local gyms and karate institutions in order to get access to patron's credit cards, debit cards, and checking account information. EFC can then bill the patron and give a kickback to the gym for each patron they sign up for their continual auto-renewing billing that can ONLY be cancelled with a written letter signed 30 days before the next billing cycle. It is 2018, who writes a letter or requires a written letter for anything anymore?
What irritates me the most is EFC's and ***'s ability to take advantage of people who have children and want to provide for their children. How can you bill me for over 31 months and when I call to explain what happened you not even offer to refund some of my money. It is so unethical and devious. We only went to this karate a handful of times in October of 2015. I have been billed multiple times over for services not rendered. I can't believe I never received a call, text, or email to ask if we wanted to continue karate lessons and billing. But this is what these two companies are wanting. They want you to sign up for the required 6 months then get as much money as they can out of you. I expected the owner of this ***'s to treat me like a person, I even expected him to see what a burden these charges are for me and that if I had known what was actually occurring would have stopped them as soon as possible. But no, he treated me like I was completely insane to ask for any refund of any kind even though we haven't set foot in his building since October of 2015. I expected EFC to refund me immediately and stop the billing immediately but instead I got the typical run around. Each business blaming the other so the consumer is left holding the bag. I work 1 full time job and 2 part time jobs. There are a lot of days my accounts are negative and on top of that I simply have legal custody of the children involved here and have given up everything to take care of them. really thought karate would help them and help our family but because of driving and schedule issues we could not make it there. Now to find out I've been scammed out of so much money I am very upset and am looking to take legal action if this is not rectified.

I purchased a *** for my son to take introductory classes. After introduction ended I was told in order for my son to take classes he needed to complete a contract. I said we only wanted to go month to month because my son was going to be employed and attending classes at CSCC. Mr D said every student had to be put on the contract for his billing and insurance, but it wasnt a contract, and as long as 2 week notice was given there would be no future obligation. When a coupon book arrived in the mail I took it in and asked about, and was reassured it was contractual. I paid for a month, and right after I sent payment my son started working. I gave notice to Mr D, and told him don't worry about my last payment because my son had to start his job and would not be able to attend. Shortly after that I began to get calls from EFC and an attorney claiming my son signed a permanent contract which h I did not sign.

re
as long as I gave him notice

My son was a student at the *** in ***. In December, 2017 he ended his time as a student at the school and we notified the school he had left. I have contacted *** 3 times requesting that bank autodraft be stopped, but in January my account was charged $156.57 for the January tuition. We do not owe this as he is no longer at the school. Since *** has refused to respond to my e-mail inquiries, made through their "info" e-mail link, I am filing this complaint to get teh auto draft stopped as well as to get the January premium refunded to us by ***. We are no longer under an actual contract with the school as the contract ended in 2011. Please contact *** to get this taken care of.

Do not do any business with this company. It is run by a bunch of crooks and scam artist. Karen is the person I dealt with. Be careful if you enter into a contract with them as they will continue to bill you long after your contract is over. I also was told there was an outstanding bill due then called to verify and was told nothing was due on the account. 2 days later I received emails and text messages saying something was owed. When I called back again I was hung up on, which I then read reviews about, is a normal business practice for them and that they do this to a lot of people. Be careful. You have been warned!

In October 2017, I was interested in joining the martial arts gym, The *** in El Paso, TX. I did not have the funds to pay for the gym membership at the time and with no previous experience I was hesitant. ***, one of the workers, informed me that I would have to pay up front. I told him that I would get back to him and *** informed me that he would discard the contract. I never received a copy of any contracts. I was suspicious of the *** at the time and I never gave them my real card information. ***, the owner of the ***, claims that cameras were installed in the gym in July. It can be seen that I never received a copy of any contracts. *** called me later informing me that they would let me come to the gym for free for the month of October and if I wanted to join I could do so.

I am a college student and I was very busy with work and school. I called the *** in October and informed them that I wasn't going to come during the month of October and I wasn't going to sign-up to attend the gym. I was never contacted so I assumed everything was good. A few months later, I received a text message that I owed a bill and I received a call from Education Funding Company (EFC). I informed them that I never signed up and called the *** about the matter in October.

On January 5, 2018, I went to the *** to talk to *** concerning the matter. He informed that he had to wait for *** to cancel the contract and stated that I signed a contract. When *** arrived I talked to him and after a lengthy discussion he told me a unethical solution. If I wanted to cancel the contract, I would have to pay $75 and he would change my account information to his own and pay the remaining fees.

I have the voice mail of *** informing me that I could come to the *** in October for free.

A few minutes ago, *** called angry telling me that I was not suppose to tell EFC. EFC refuses to cancel my contract without payment.

My son was attending *** school in toms river nj and had stopped in november. I was told to contact Joseph and he could help me, I have called numerous times over 2 weeks, left email, *** messages and filled out the inquiry on their webpage all in attempt to get someone to respond to my request to stop payment. I also tried stopping it with my bank but guess what it went through today under a different merchant name!! I am tired of calling this company with no return calls or emails or messages!!

I have called this company repeatedly trying to cancel my gym membership. They repeatedly dodge my calls and refuse to call me back. This has resulted in my card continuing to be charged despite calling them with ample time to cancel and avoid incurring more fees. This is extremely shoddy business practice and cannot be allowed to continue.