Legal Question in Credit and Debt Law in California

We visited a tax preparer for a first time getting to know you meeting to see if he was someone who could handle our somewhat complicated tax situation since my husband retired with stock options,profit sharing and foreign tax credits from working overseas for a major oil company.

We spent about 2 hours with him, the first hour or so was just small talk where he told us about his childhood in Marin County, his playing golf with Jefferson Starship, his "green" $2.million dollar home with concrete floors and cheap electricity bills, how he does his sister's taxes in Canada, etc.. The last 1/2 hour he ran some calculations to be sure that we had paid enough taxes up front for the year. When we left we thought he was a very entertaining guy and that because he was younger than the two other fellows we met with we might just go with him. We thought it odd that he spent so much time with us. We figured he had a lot of free time on his hands since tax season had ended. Three months later we got a bill for $400.00 for his time. Never were we told we would be charged to meet with him and we never signed any agreements with him. We sent an email to him to ask if the bill was an error and he replied "no". We sent a reply back stating that we don't feel that we should be charged for time he spent talking about himself. If we had known a clock was ticking we would have cut him short and been out in 1/2 hour. He never replied and now we got another bill in the mail with a 1% late fee tacked on. I called the office to ask to speak with someone about my billing dispute and left 2 voice mails explaining the situation and that I would pay $100.00 for the calculation, with no reply. What do we do? Can they legally bill us when fees were not discussed and nothing signed? We have met with various financial planners, accountants, etc. in our search for a "team" of help in retirement. None have charged us for an initial consultation. This accounting company handles a lot of high profile companies and individuals and we guess that maybe they have lawyers on staff themselves? What are our rights?

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