I recently bought a product online due to falling for some marketing which it was only $50 so no big deal whatever…but then a month later I get billed for the same product and see that I was enrolled into a subsciption. I emailed them and told them this was wrong and they apologized and said my subscription would be canceled. It was annoying to lose another $50 but oh well its over. So then another month goes by and boom, I am charged again for the product. I email them and tell them what happened and that I wanted my money back. They apologized, said it wouldn’t happen again and would cancel my subscription. They said no refund but advised that I should cancel my credit card to not let it happen again. I then looked for some reviews on this website and found that this was their typical practice. I filed a complaint with the BBB but doesn’t really seem to make a difference. I finally have my situation resolved after calling my credit card company but I was just wondering if there is any accountability for online retailers other than people writing bad reviews.
Lots and lots of online scams. I bought 3 x a novelty electonic gadget for my kids last Christmas, got a shipping notification and then nothing for a while. Went online and quickly realized it was a scam. The gadget photos were stolen from a “look at my cool hobby project” thread on reddit, the shopify account linked to a women’s clothing store in geneva.
The only thing to do it immediately challenge through your credit card (and for goodness sake don’t give them two months of grace!). When the challenge is rejected because the scammer has a bot set up to make the appropriate assertions to cc companies, challenge again. I don’t think it takes a lot of diligence from a lot of people to get these operations offline but you do have to work with your cc company. They’re all set up to pray on our ever growing instinct to click/buy immediately, in my case through a FB ad, and reviews and BBB complaints don’t do anything at all. IMO.
Dude, call your credit card company and dispute the charge.
If it’s a legitimate retailer (using the term “legitimate” loosely, to differentiate them from outright scams that just take your money and run) but using shady business practices like you describe, then CC chargebacks do create some level of accountability - once the number of chargebacks hits a threshold the CC companies will increase the vendor’s card processing rates, or even drop them as a customer altogether, which obviously impacts their ability to do business.
Um just tell your credit card company all the charges are fraudulent
What @windywave said. This happened to my wife recently. I got online and reported the charges as fraudulent. My bank called the next day to say they’ve been made aware the site is a fraud and wiped the charges. Her card was already canceled and a new one on the way via fedex.
My bank (Wise) has virtual credit cards, no physical card, just the numbers. I have a virtual card that i only use on websites I am not sure of. I manually unlock and lock the card each time I use it. If there is a problem I can cancel the virtual card and get a new one immediately.
My wife got scammed buying kids travel bunk beds and the scammers had something to get around CC charge backs. I remember getting an envelope shipped to us with some pendant in it, didnt think much about it as it was basically worthless. But once we tried to cancel the charge, the CC company said that the retailer had a shipping invoice that we had signed for, and that is all it took for the charge to remain…
Pretty shitty too, as of course bunk beds would be heavy and huge, but that just didnt seem to matter, and that POS they sent us acted as an actual shipping document. Which prevents the charge back from going any further…Live and learn, she only gets to shop on Amazon now…
A guy I know used his virtual credit card to get a free Butcher Box. Signed up for the 1st free box and then locked the card before the subscription hit. LOL
So I did already contact my CC company and got back the last charge so they did get me for an extra $50 on top of my original order. Its not the money that hurts, its that it feels like a scammer got one on me lol. I despise scammers! The website was chicaddons and it was an impulse buy off of a facebook reel lol never again!
Glad you got one of the charges back. It’s too bad they couldn’t get them all back, but I guess since they were in previous periods they couldn’t do much.
Thanks for the PSA on scammers!