About a month ago I responded to an E-Market Research Group survey to get a $100 gift certificate for a well known retailer and for coupons on dog food, soap products, etc. Part of the survey offered a free trial of anti-wrinkle cream and you just paid the shipping and handling. I figured this was like the offers you get for a free flashlight or a calendar with your charge statement and just pay shipping. A couple of weeks later I received the product, and thought $5.95 was okay. There was nothing in the package indicating I had signed up for a monthly auto ship program or how much that was.
Yesterday, I received a package from the company with another jar of the cream. The product by the way is a one ounce jar of Nexiderm-SP. I looked at the packing slip and saw that it was Order Number: M* and I was now enrolled in a monthly auto-ship program for $95.90 a month. My husband checked the activity on my account last night and there were two charges on 4/8/05, each for $89.95 charged by BRI*NexidermSP.
This morning I had him print my account activity and found that there were two more charges on 4/14/05 each for $95.50, again for BRI*NexidermSP! Now I'm not sure if there were more charges in March for this company since my husband just printed activity from the beginning of April.
I phoned the Boehm-Ritter, Inc this morning at 888-758-7444 and spoke with Evelyn in their customer service area. She said that since I did not cancel my enrolment after receiving the initial shipment I was automatically enrolled in this auto-ship of product. I told her it was free product and she said it was a trial. I explained to her that I was not aware of that and that I had been charged 4 times on my credit card. She told me I could return the shipment I received yesterday and they would review giving me credit and when I asked her about the other 3 charges she said I would need to return those too, but I have not received those shipments! She gave me no specific instructions on how to return. I told her that the charges to my credit card were unauthorized and she said the fact that I had enrolled entitled them to do it. I told her that I was being scammed and she more or less told me I had authorized that too!
I spoke to my bank and they are treating it as fraud and reversing the charges. They also closed the account so they could not make additional charges. Learned a valuable lession from this.
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