I signed up for freescore.com last Wednesday. I was curious as to what my credit score was. I checked several sources, but decided to go with this one. The site claimed that I could sign up for a 7 day free trial, then cancel at any time before the 7 days were over to avoid any charges to my account. That very day I called to cancel my account because I did not want to forget and then get charged for the services that I weren't going to use. The representative on the phone tried for several minutes to pressure me into keeping my account, telling how beneficial it would be. After several times of telling him that I just wanted to cancel my account, he agreed to do so and said my free trial would end in 7 days.
Today I get online to check my bank statement. I see that I have a $14.95 charge from Free Score. I called immediately to get the charges taken off. I first talked to some man that had a fairly rude tone with me from the very beginning. I told him that I canceled my account last week and should not have gotten charged. He told me that I agreed to the charges and there was nothing he could do about it. I told him that I never agreed to the charges and he proceeded to tell me that they had the recording of the call and that people call every day "claiming" that they did not agree to the charges and wanted them taken off. He was talking to me as if I was lying to him and was trying to screw them over. I told him that the charge went through just today and that I know I did not agree to any additional charges, but he kept insisting that I must have or I wouldn't have gotten charged. I asked if he even thought that it could be an error on their end. He said that it could have, but even if it was, it was too late. I said, "So basically, what you're telling me is that you all could have messed up and the customer is having to pay for it." After getting absolutely nowhere with him, I hung up and immediately called back.
I got some woman the second call. After explaining the situation she transferred me to a supervisor. He told me that the money was non-refundable and that they have on file that I agreed to keep my account for a charge of $14.95 a month. Again, there is no way in the world I would agree to this. I would never use an account on that site and certainly wouldn't want to pay $14.95 a month for it. He told me that I agreed to it and I asked if I could hear a recording since they evidently have all of their calls on file. I had to be uncharacteristically rude on the phone because they kept insinuating that I was a liar and was trying to use their services while getting my money back. I told him that I wanted my account cancelled immediately, wanted absolutely nothing to do with the web site again, and wanted my money back. He finally agreed to charge the money back to my account (this is after I was told twice that there was absolutely nothing they could do and the money was non-refundable).
I think I know what happened. When I called last week to cancel my account, the person I talked to kept pressuring me to keep my account and I felt like I was being backed into a corner. I was tricked somehow into agreeing to charges that I would otherwise never agree to. I came to the conclusion that they deceive their customers into paying additional fees for an account that no longer wish to keep, then tell them that it is non-refundable until they realize that they messed with someone who's not going to back down. It was only $14.95, not necessary a huge deal by any means, but it's the principle of the whole thing that bothered me. My advice is to choose a different web site to begin with. However, if you do decide to go with FreeScore, be extra cautious when calling to cancel your account, or you might be tricked into paying extra charges as well.
0 comments