Illegally Overcharging Customers as Revenge for Bad Reviews

Apparently those famous words from the movie "You can’t handle the truth" apply not only to Navy Lawyers, but also to maid service owners. In a case brought forward in Los Angeles by the city attorney, a maid service has been charged with intentionally and illegally overcharging the credit cards of customers who wrote negative reviews about the business.

In this alleged act of retribution, the case states that West Coast Maids (an online service that dispatches maids to a people’s homes) seemed to be intentionally overcharging the credit cards of those customers who had subsequently been found to have written bad reviews for the service they received from the company.

Fortunately for those overcharged victims, city attorney Mike Feuer was not one who was going to take this matter lightly. He has charged the defendants with multiple criminal offenses, including identity theft. Mr. Feuer firmly stated that he felt anyone who overcharges credit cards of customers after they stated their honest opinion was both outrageous and totally unacceptable.

Does the city attorney mean business? Let put it this way; if convicted the accused maid service owner, Steve Yojin Yun, faces up to seven years of imprisonment and fines totaling over $7000 (if he is found guilty on all seven counts of identity theft). This is no small matter for sure.

Apparently Mr. Yun even went so far as to personally call each person who complained. When they would not accept a refund in exchange for taking down the review on Yelp; he went as far as threatening some of those unhappy customers.

The whole incident came to light after an investigation by the local Department of Consumer Affairs. Let’s hope the department does not employ West Coast Maids to clean their office space because one can only imagine what the revenge overcharge would end up being!