Can a company charge you for services never requested or received?
In general, you can only be charged for services if there is some kind of contract. The contract doesn't have to be written, but you have to have agreed to it somehow. However, it is possible that you entered into a contract due to some clause in the home purchase contract or the contract with the home owners' association. There are also sometimes services you are legally required to get, such as regular inspection of heating furnaces (though I don't think this translates to automatic contracts). But in any case you would not be liable for services rendered before you entered into the contract, which sounds like it's the case here. No. A company cannot bill you for services you did not request nor receive. If they could, imagine how many people would just randomly get bills in their mail. Ignore them. They don't have a contract or agreement with you and can't do anything other than make noise. If they get aggressive or don't stop requesting money, hire an attorney and it will be taken care of. I have had a couple of businesses do this to me.  I simply ask them to come over to talk about the bill.  Sometimes this ends it.  If they come over then I call the cops to file a report on fraud.  A lot of times the police will do nothing unless they have had a load of complaints but it certainly gets the company off your back.  And if they are truly unscrupulous it doesn't hurt to get a picture of them talking with the police and their van, and then post the whole situation online - you will see others come forward really quick after doing something like this. "Here's another example of such a practice and the problem it caused.  My brother, who lived alone, was missing from work for several days so a co-worker went to his home to search for him and called the local Sheriff's Office for assistance.  The local fire department which runs the EMS ambulance was also dispatched in the event there was a medical emergency.  They discovered my brother had passed away inside his home and had obviously been dead for days.  As our family worked on probate matters to settle his estate following this death, it was learned that the local fire department had levied a bill against my brother's estate for $800 for responding with their ambulance to his home that day.  I tried to talk to their commander about this, insisting my brother had not called them, nor had they transported him or even checked his pulse.  The commander insisted theirs was common practice - that someone was always billed for their medical response.  He would not withdraw his bill for ""services"".  I hate to say, but the family paid the bill in order to prevent delay of his probate issues and from receiving monies that paid for his final expenses."
If there was some contract in place (even a verbal agreement) that he would complete the work you asked for in return for payment, then you don't have to pay him anything. He hasn't completed the work and what he did do was stolen from another person. He hasn't held up his end of the agreement, so you don't owe squat. If you have not already hired another caterer, potentially your best solution might be to try and work out something with these folks. Presuming of course that they still have access to their equipment, dishware, etc, and to the extent that what you have paid might cover their labor, equipment use etc there might be some way for them to provide the services you have paid for, if you pay for materials such as the food itself directly . This presumes of course that it's only the IRS that they stiffed, and have not had most of their (material) capital assets repossessed or seized.  and you still trusted them enough to work out something. Otherwise as Duff points out you will likely need to file a small claims lawsuit and get in line with any other creditors. I have already talked to them over the phone and they insist they   haven't charged me yet, and I will not be charged. When I informed   them I had in fact been charged they agreed it would be reversed. So I   have tried to resolve the issue and I don't have any confidence they   will reverse the charge as it has not been done yet. They are   difficult to communicate which makes the whole process more difficult. Your best next step is to call the credit card company and share this story.  I believe the likely result is that the credit card company will initiate a charge back. My question is, is this a valid reason to file a chargeback on my credit card? Yes.   If you attempted to work it out with the vendor and it is not working out, this is an appropriate time to initiate a charge back. Obviously, the credit card's administators know who this charge was submitted by. Contact them, tell them that you don't recognize the charge, and ask them to tell you who it was from. If they can't or won't, tell them you suspect fraud and want it charged back, then wait to see who contacts you to complain that the payment was cancelled. Note that you should charge back  any charge you firmly believe is an error, if attempts to resolve it with the company aren't working. Also note that if you really ghink this is fraud, you should contact your bank and ask them to issue a new card number. Standard procedures exist. Use them when appropriate. "You have a subscription that costs $25 They have the capabilities to get that $25 from the card on file if you had stopped paying for it, you re-upping the cost of the subscription was more of a courtesy. They would have considered pulling the $25 themselves or it may have gone to collections (or they could courteously ask if you wanted to resubscribe, what a concept) The credit card processing agreements (with the credit card companies) and the FTC would handle such business practices, but ""illegal"" wouldn't be the word I would use. The FTC or Congress may have mandated that an easy ""opt-out"" number be associated with that kind of business practice, and left it at that." "Anything is negotiable.  Clearly in the current draft of the contract the company isn't going to calculate or withhold taxes on your behalf - that is your responsibility. But if you want to calculate taxes yourself, and break out the fees you are receiving into several ""buckets"" on the invoice, the company might agree (they might have to run it past their legal department first). I don't see how that helps anything - it just divides the single fee into two pieces with the same overall total. As @mhoran_psprep points out, it appears that the company expects you to cover your expenses from within your charges. Thus, it's up to you to decide the appropriate fees to charge, and you are assuming the risk that you have estimated your expenses incorrectly. If you want the company to pay you a fee, plus reimburse your expenses, you will need to craft that into the contract. It's not clear what kind of expenses you need to be covered, and sometimes companies will not agree to them. For specific tax rule questions applicable to your locale, you should consult your tax adviser." You definitely have an argument for getting them to reverse the late fee, especially if it hasn't happened very often. (If you are late every month they may be less likely to forgive.) As for why this happens, it's not actually about business days, but instead it's based on when they know that you paid. In general, there are 2 ways for a company to mark a bill as paid: Late Fees: Some systems automatically assign late fees at the start of the day after the due date if money has not been received. In your case, if your bill was due on the 24th, the late fee was probably assessed at midnight of the 25th, and the payment arrived after that during the day of the 25th. You may have been able to initiate the payment on the company's website at 11:59pm on the 24th and not have received a late fee (or whatever their cutoff time is). Suggestion: as a rule of thumb, for utility bills whose due date and amount can vary slightly from month to month, you're usually better off setting up your payments on the company website to pull from your bank account, instead of setting up your bank account to push the payment to the company. This will ensure that you always get the bill paid on time and for the correct amount. If you still would rather push the payment from your bank account, then consider setting up the payment to arrive about 5 days early, to account for holidays and weekends. Phone conversations are useless if the company is uncooperative, you must take it into the written word so it can be documented.  Sent them certified letters and keep copies of everything you send and any written responses from the company.  This is how you will get actual action. W9 is required for any payments. However, in your case - these are not payments, but refunds, i.e.: you're not receiving any income from the company that is subject to tax or withholding rules, you're receiving money that is yours already. I do not think they have a right to demand W9 as a condition of refund, and as Joe suggested - would dispute the charge as fraudulent. So, since you have no record of picking it up, are you going to do the right thing and claim you never got it?  On another note, I was known at the local home depot for being the guy who ordered things online, they actually used my orders to train new people. That was back when buying online got 5% back from Discover. Inform the company that you didn't receive the payment. Only they can trace the payment via their bank. Well, it really depends on for how long the quote has been made. But yes, when you're honoring it, you should let them know that this is a once of thing and that you're out of pocket doing  it. Most people will understand and when you make the appropriate quote next time around,  especially when elaborate where the additional cost that you did not account for initially, come from. It's important to maintain customer trust by being transparent. You can justify higher prices with time needed, material needed or whatever comes to mind. It's just important to convince that customer that without it, they  wouldn't get this superb service that they're getting now. not if it's only Bob and a couple others that are having the problem.  The company is spending more money on the wages of the guy helping him out than what Bob brought to the company with his purchase.  There's no sense in paying for a customer. What you are describing here is the opposite of a problem: You're trying to contact a debt-collector to pay them money, but THEY'RE ignoring YOU and won't return your calls!  LOL!  All joking aside, having 'incidental' charges show up as negative marks on your credit history is an annoyance- thankfully you're not the first to deal with such problems, and there are processes in place to remedy the situation. Contact the credit bureau(s) on which the debt is listed, and file a petition to have it removed from your history.  If everything that you say here is true, then it should be relatively easy. Edit: See here for Equifax's dispute resolution process- it sounds like you've already completed the first two steps. Chris, since you own your own company, nobody can stop you from charging your personal expenses to your business account. IRS is not a huge fan of mixing business and personal expenses and this practice might indicate to them that you are not treating your business seriously, and it should classify your business as a hobby. IRS defines deductible business expense as being both: ordinary AND necessary. Meditation is not an ordinary expense (other S-corps do not incur such expense.) It is not a necessary expense either. Therefore, you cannot deduct this expense. http://www.irs.gov/Businesses/Small-Businesses-&-Self-Employed/Deducting-Business-Expenses