The message screamed at the city of Loganville's Facebook followers.
"WARNING TO ALL CITY OF LOGANVILLE RESIDENTS!!!" the July 18 post declared. "It has come to our attention that there is a third party company named DOXO that has appeared in online searches for our customers to pay their utility bills. The company is using the City of Loganville logo and [the same] color scheme as the City's website."
It stopped short of using the word "scam," but went on to make claims of fraud and urge residents to share the information with their friends and family.
Doxo, though, is fighting back.
The Seattle-based company is an award-winning one with millions of users, co-founder and vice president of business development Roger Parks said Monday. Those users implement Doxo's smartphone app or website to make payments at thousands of different businesses across the country.
The company has a "B" rating with the Better Business Bureau.
"[Loganville] not liking it is different than it being a scam," Parks said. "... They don't have a good understanding of how it works."
It works like this: Users themselves add companies to the app and submit payments through Doxo, which, like many bank bill pay systems, then submits payments to those companies on the user's behalf for a small fee. The company doesn't need a company (or city's) approval to offer its services, and the goal is to allow users to pay all of their bills online with just one set of log-in information.
Parks said about 100 Doxo users have accounts with the city of Loganville and there's never been a problem before. Parks believes the kerfluffle with Loganville started when a user did not realize the system, which sometimes relies on paper checks, would take up to five days to pay the city.
"If they have a legitimate customer care problem, we don't want that either," Park said. "... But calling it a scam is just absolutely inappropriate."
The city, meanwhile, is standing pat, saying it did not authorize the site to use its logo and doesn't want it misleading its residents.
"We're not going to retract anything," Mayor Dan Curry told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution late last week.
— Staff correspondent Karen Huppertz contributed to this article.
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