While I was back in the States I ordered something on a whim after seeing an infomercial on TV. Normally, I would never do anything like that. If my mother had an internet connection I would have checked it out first, but she doesn’t so I didn’t. My reasoning was that it was related to my wife’s line of work (real estate) and if it was a scam, I’d just be out 40 bucks. No big deal, right? Wrong.
In addition to the $40 for the package, I was charged $25 for shipping and handling. A little steep, but still I’m willing to give it a chance. I got my package in the mail a few days later and after looking at the materials determined right away that it was all probably worthless. There were typos everywhere, the quality of the paper was cheap, and the booklets were full of hype and short on facts. I brought it back to Korea with me anyway, thinking I’d check out the associated web site later, and promptly forgot all about it. A few days ago I was looking through my credit card statements and noticed a new charge from the same company for another $40. This prompted me to get the materials out and go over them again.
What I had missed was in a paragraph at the end of a page full of hype that I never got past the middle of. The initial purchase automatically enrolled me in a ‘club’. The first month was ‘free’. Should I not cancel, I would be billed $40 every month after the first. A little upset about not seeing this earlier, I sat up late that night to wait so that I could call the given phone number during business hours to cancel my subscription. I wasn’t much happier to hear a message saying the number was disconnected. I called again to be sure. Same thing.
More than a little frustrated now, I scoured the materials for another phone number and found one. It, too, was out of service. My receipt of purchase contained another customer service number. I called that. This time, I got a recorded message, but it was from a different company. The message said that office hours were from 6am to 6pm Pacific time, Monday - Friday, and I should call back then. Funilly enough, I was making the call during business hours. I called that number several times over the next couple of days, only to get the same message every time.
In the paragraph that informed me of the membership fee, there was an email address next to the cancellation phone number. Fairly enraged, I fired off a simple email asking for instructions on how to cancel my subscription. I wasn’t getting my hopes up, though, thinking that I wouldn’t get a reply. Well, I was wrong. I got a reply from my mail server the next day telling me that there was no response fromt the SMTP server. The message was automatically resent for the next two days with the same result each time.
Ultimately, I went to my bank and asked them what I could do, hoping there was some way to block the charges. Since I had the cancellation instructions and the bounced emails in hand, they told me they would help me. But they couldn’t block a single charge specifically. The only thing they could do was give me a new card number. That was two days ago. I just got a call that the new card is in and I can go pick it up tomorrow. Now I’ll have to go update all of my legitmate recurring subscritions, but at least I’m through with that crap.
Being well aware of internet scams and fradulent online businesses, I never imagined that such a thing could happen when ordering from an informercial on television. I thought my biggest risk was paying $40 for a pile of garbage. I mean, these guys are out in the open. There’s no ip spoofing or anything like that to conceal who they are. Looking for them online, I found hundreds of complaints about them, and the Better Business Bureau of Utah has a page about them. I was lucky, though. Some people wound up investing thousands of dollars in their program. Some people bought real estate using the system only to find out the advice in the books and the training programs was outdated or just plain wrong. Even so, I feel like a goober.
Before I came to Korea 15 years ago I never would have ordered anything from an infomercial. The difference now is that I’ve got enough money to throw some away on risky purchases now and again. But after this little incident, I’m going back to that rule and never buying anything from an infomercial again.
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