An aggressive office supply company have been ordered to reimburse a retired farm couple in Victoria after forcing them to buy over $90,000 of printer ink.
Rod and Charmaine Sharp began receiving cold calls from Corporate Office Supplies in 2015. Mrs Sharp told the Victorian Civil and Administrative Tribunal that the telemarketers wouldn’t take ‘no’ for an answer and she eventually bought 56 ink cartridges so they’d leave her alone.
But it didn’t end there, reports Fairfax.
The calls kept coming, and Mrs Sharp went on to be billed for 2000 ink cartridges. The couple went through one cartridge every ten months – so it would take the farming couple over 1700 years to use the $90,000 of ink they were sold.
Embarrassed, she didn’t tell her husband until aggressive debt collectors started chasing them for money.
The company’s accountant says that she was never bullied and could have turned down the offer at any point.
The deputy president of the Tribunal, Ian Lulham, called for the company to be investigated by consumer affairs since the amount of ink sold to the couple was ‘frankly ridiculous’.
’It is not overstating the position to say that any business which sold over 2000 cartridges to a business that owned one printer acted unlawfully,’ he said.
Corporate Office Supplies have declined to comment, though company CEO, James Murray, says he’s a fan of ‘direct marketing’ – also known as cold-calling – for it’s ability to bring in profits.
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