Year end audit, $120.00/mo in porn site subscriptions.
 

lol!

Throughout the year I often join sites at surfer prices to evaluate their join process or members areas. Needless to say, I have been doing this with my Visa check card which links directly to my main business account.

I'm as smart of a surfer as I am a webmaster, I'm not prone to making many mistakes. I never make *ANY* mistakes when it comes to cancelling. Admittedly, though, my business statements are so long that I rarely look at them every month as I save that for my accountants.

I sat today to audit the general ledger that I got back from my accountants and discovered some funny charges.

Ibill for $39.99/mo for the last 4+ months
PayCom for $39.97/mo for the last 4+ months
Vivid Tours for $39.99/mo for the last 4+ months

Each one of these was originally a $2-$3 trial that I cancelled immediately online. Fuck them all. I'll call and give them the opportunity to refund me and if they don't then I'll charge them back.

If I thought there was any possibility that I didn't do the right thing to cancel them immediately, I'd just make sure that they were cancelled now to avoid further charges. Certainly, from now on, I'll read through each one of my statements.

This is one serious case of fuck the surfer by three different companies.

Brad

hehe, this sounds like one of those letters that people post here from their members. Except of course that your English is fine...:1orglaugh

Best of luck.... Visa is a fucking nightmare and a waste of time for charging stuff back

So how many minutes should I wait on hold for IBill customer service before I decide to hang up and just charge it back? I would have done this online but IBILLCS.COM is not online or something.

Brad

Imagine the hassles for a member trying to cancel and not knowing or too embarresed to admit it :1orglaugh

this might be the part where the processor's are shaving

You should join OrgyFucked.com

They'll cross-bill you $9,623.65 if you don't cancel within the first 15 seconds.

I never had problems charging back items to my credit card, especially items ordered over the net when someone copied my visa number. I just call customer service at Royal Bank and after about 2-3 minutes of them trying to figure out what the purchase was for they just charge it back.

Best of luck with the chargebacks/refund attempts.

WG

Why not ask the billing companies what the site was, and username was. Look through your email records and see if you can find the cancelation notices. If you can, then you have a case, if you didn't, you might be a surfer and forgot to cancel when you meant to. :)
ZoiNk

I did that last fall. Joined a bunch of sites just like a surfer to go through the join process and see what was on the inside of the sites and stuff.

I almost ended up having to chargeback a couple of things.

Load of shit. Ever since then I wasn't suprised at the crackdown by Visa/MC.

Just got off the phone with IBILL and they are refunding October, November, December and January $39.99 charges. Looks like June, July, August and September will have to be charged back to ARS. When told that he had two choices, refunding or a chargeback he told me he could only refund up to a few months back. Dumbass, they're going to get 4 chargebacks.

Brad

:helpme

LOL

The funniest thing...? They say I subscribed to bootycollege.com! There's nothing wrong with a little bit 'o booty but interestingly enough I know that never in my life have a purchased a subscription to an ethnic site. I would have been more likely to subscribe to any of ARS' dozens of other niche sites first.

Brad

So, was it an ARS site you originally joined or was the ARS site made from a cross-sell ?

WG

Well shit if it was made from a cross-sell that would explain how I could have missed it.

Yeah, those cross-sells are tricky little buggers and more prone to chargebacks because surfers don't notice it too often. Just checking/unchecking a box can rack up those $120/month fees.

WG

Well, the guy from Paycom was a dick. It's not their policy to do searches by name or address. So, since I don't have my statements in front of me and since we can't seem to find any of my email addresses in their system it looks like there is nothing I can do at this moment.

Brad

Brad thanks for posting this... This is actually all very interesting coming from a webmaster and good food for thought about the bullshit going on... A fuckin' shame.

3 or 4 times is not just a billing error...

Good luck. You should have no problems charging back... I am not sure though if there is a 6 month limit...

LD

I'm sure if the customer service reps actually looked when the last time you logged in was they'll realize there was an error. If they don't bother, they're stupid for forcing the customer to go thru the chargeback approach when clearly customer did not access the site(s) purchased.

WG

This is fucked up, I am wondering if all these buggers were "cross-sells". Interestingly enough, I'm also not naive or stupid enough to miss a "check box" on a sign up form unless it was hidden or something. Chances are some of these fuckers just hid the cross-sell in the terms and conditions.

Anyone have a customer service number for Vivid Tours? I presume Vivid does their own credit card billing and that's what these charges are for.

Brad

They probably hid it right next to their buried notice about how your 3 day trial must be cancelled in 48 hours or you get rebilled anyways.

48 hours? I thought it was 24 hours after charge approval!?! :1orglaugh

Ok so I went to a vivid paysite and clicked on the customer service link from the join page...

http://service.vividvideo.com/

You tell me what YOU get when you click that.

Brad

Still loading the page (3 minutes now).... great customer service Vivid has :D

WG

loads fast here.

You think Vivid was good? try http://www.ibillcs.com

Brad

Loaded instantly and took me right to the cancellation page.

loads VERY fast here

Humm, I'm getting it now but I was getting a 404 originally.

Brad

Odd, seems to load fast now too.... guess they were rebooting a machine or something.

WG

ibillcs.com is dead here.

same here.

loaded fast, and I clicked right to cancel, did I miss something?

It 404'd when I tried it before.

"Vivid Tours" is refunding the last 3 months. They're making me charge back June, July, August, September and October. I wouldn't have believed it if I didn't hear it from them but it's actually fraud. The signup email address was "[email protected]" - DEFINITELY not me.

Brad

Brad:

Email me the exact time you called (PST). I will pull the digital tape, listen, evaluate and fire if necessary. If this happens again, please call me. You have the numbers and you know I always respond.

We don't look up by name for many reasons. As for our sales, you know as well as anyone that we send an email confimation on every signup and a cancel confirmation email (if you call in, you are asked - if you email or online cancel it is automatic).

C

Hi Chris,

I know I was uptight when I was speaking with him and most likely frustrated that I wasn't hearing what I wanted to hear. He did reiterate several times that customer service was 24 hours and that I could call back. I felt he was rushing me along but that's not abnormal as I am sure he was working a call queue.

Interestingly enough, after I finished with PayCom I moved onto Vivid. What I discovered with them was that the email address they had for my transaction belonged to someone else. I never would have believed it until she said the email address on file for the transaction was [email protected]. My credit card info stolen?! lol I used to manage customer service for my own paysite merchant account and I had heard the "stolen" excuse so many times and knew it was BS. Murphy's law that this might have happened to me!

I'm going to call your service department back after I get either my January bank statement in the mail or am able to pull December's from my accountant. I'm starting to wonder since all these subscriptions were done in June if it was possibly a credit card number stolen from me by an employee at the Mail Boxes Etc or perhaps someone I had working in my office at that time. I can't conceive of either stealing from me but who knows.

I'm still wondering why they don't have the discretion to do a name search but on the same token I realize my situation is unique - most people have their statement right in front of them.

What I realized later this evening as I was reflecting is that the Visa debit card all of these charges were on (and still billing) is currently a cancelled card. I left it in an ATM a month or so ago and cancelled it (although I later retrieved it from that bank). Someone suggested to me that since these were transactions that were recurring previous to the card cancellation that they would continue to be approved for 12 months as some sort of protection for people's regular recurring transactions that might be overlooked when replacing a card... as if the presumption is that if something was rebilling prior to the stolen date that it is in fact an authorized charge.

Obviously, I need to have a discussion with my bank if they're allowing charges to go through on a truly inactive card. Since the card has been replaced and all of my statements are elsewhere it looks like I'll need to get my stuff and try again in a few days.

Cheers,

Brad

You know what Brad, this excuse of getting your CC info stolen is quite common. It's happened to my corporate card and my personal visa and when Visa faxed me the account info they were registered to Yahoo/Hotmail addresses. On the corporate card, Visa was able to trace the place of theft to a cellular phone representative when I bought a cellular. It's quite amazing how easy it is to copy a 16 digit number when you give a sales rep your CC number. It just puzzles me that they would risk 5 years in prison for some free porn... either way, the point is that CC number theft happens quite often, so just keep an open mind when some of your clients call in to try and contest there charges with you :-)

WG

hehe

I always did keep an open mind! Thankfully, the days are long since past that fielding such calls would ever be needed. I've got crazy, crazy stories from when I used to do my own customer service.

I've always been of the opinion that it's easier to get your CC stolen at the gas station than it is online... but it does happen everywhere.

I just assumed it was me that made the purchases to begin with because I've bought several trials, etc... although it's appearing that it's someone that likes chocolate booty and porn stars:Graucho

Brad

Hehe... your right, it seems someone is enjoying some free porn on your tab. I would start to mess with them, start emailing them and shit. I had some fun with it when visa faxed me the contact info associated with the stolen account info... Either way, if the CC number is indeed being used by a horny surfer, you may want to contact your card issuer to get a new CC#, that guy with your visa could do much worse damage to your credit info than just buy porn.

WG

So we should refund you now before you charge back on us? :winkwink: