Viewer warns of loans in her name after door-to-door rip-off

(WSPA) – Imagine getting a notice in the mail that a $7,000 loan had been taken out in your name, a binding contract that you never knowingly signed.

When a viewer reached out to 7NEWS “Here to Help” wondering how she got stuck with this loan, we worked for five months to unravel the mystery and got, not one, but several accounts canceled, which the viewer says all tie back to a door-to-door sales visit.

Last summer Pamela Meadows, in Spartanburg, had something most of us dream of a credit score of 824.

Who would have thought one phone call from a salesman could be the start of a downward spiral?

She said the caller claimed to be with her alarm system company Safe Home Security and he set up an appointment to check her house.

Meadows told 7NEWS he said, “We are just going to upgrade your system for a few pennies of what you’re already paying.”

She said two salesmen arrived and told her their company had purchased Safe Home and to get the low-cost upgrade, she had to verify her information, bank account and all.

“That was the hook right there. I should have been wiser, but I wasn’t,” Meadows said.

Her first red flag was a past-due bill from a different security company, ADT.

Then she received an equipment charge from Impulse Alarm.

The most concerning was a notice from Aqua Finance for a nearly $7,000 loan in her name.

She suspected the accounts were tied to the door-to-door sales visits and tried for months to get the accounts canceled with no luck.  That’s when she picked up the phone.

“And I called 7NEWS and someone said, ‘Oh you need to speak to Diane Lee,” Meadows said.

However, the story gets worse before it gets better.

A few weeks later, Meadows got another loan notice from a financing company called GoodLeap, this one for more than $58,000 for solar panels she said she never ordered.

Confused? So were we, I until we pulled Meadow’s credit report and discovered the first loan had a dealer listed on it: Primitive Success Group out of Charleston.

It is a company name Meadows said she had never seen before.

7NEWS then pulled licensing documents from the South Carolina Department of Labor Licensing and Regulations (LLR) to track down the owner. That man was Everrick Magwood, who sometimes goes by Shuan, and is a face Meadows says she’s seen before. 

She said he had come to her house to sell solar panels and the first salesman came with him. Then Meadows said she realized what she thought was an approval for an upgrade, was actually a voice signature for the loans.

“He put it up to my face and he held the phone and he said, ‘Just say yes.’ I guess that’s the docu-sign, I wasn’t aware of that,” Meadows said.

The signatures are not her handwriting. The loans appeared to have been validated through e-signing whether digital or a voice recording. Either way, it’s a binding contract.

“They were weaving a web all along. And I felt sickened, I felt like I’ve been so betrayed.”

Concerns about door-to-door sales have led to additional protections under state law including the right to cancel a contract within three days.

Plus, Carri Grube Lybarker, the head of the South Carolina Department of Consumer Affairs, said the fact is that no written documents were given to Meadows violates laws governing the marketing of solar panels. She called the lack of a written contract in this situation “a red flag and a violation.”

“Most consumer credit contracts need to be in writing, and so a lot of times if there is a recision if there is a right to cancel you certainly have a written contract associated with that,” Lybarker said. “And really quite frankly most consumer contracts do require a written agreement.”

7NEWS checked with LLR and found Primitive Success Group does not have a license to sell or market solar.

We tried several times to interview the owner but after an initial conversation, they did not pick up or return our multiple calls.  During that initial conversation, Magwood told 7NEWS Meadows knew exactly what she was signing.

“I never signed anything, and he stood there in my kitchen and he was gloating about wow when we get the solar panels up on this house,” Meadows explained. “And I’m like, I’m not getting it. I’m not interested in getting the solar panels.”

Yet she ended up with a $58,000 loan.

After 7NEWS reached out to Aqua Finance and Goodleap, the loan companies investigated the complaints and canceled the debt, acknowledging the loans were “fraudulent.”

ADT and Impulse Alarm also canceled the accounts.

“I want to say that God sent me an angel.  And her name was Diane Lee,” Meadows said.

Despite the loan, Meadows was never contacted by any company to actually begin installing solar panels.

As for those sales reps, 7NEWS confirmed they can no longer do business with the loan and security companies involved.

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