Pay Pal (www.paypal.com) recently began advertising a service. It sounded good, because you can use their account by being issued a MasterCard that, according to them, could only be used one time. The actual charges are applied to your Pay Pal credit account, but merchants see a Master Charge card complete with account number, which was advertised as only being able to be billed one time, a security code, and an expiration date.
I ordered a free gift from IQ Derma and paid through the Pay Pal/MasterCard service. With that, I ordered and paid for some eye cream. I received, along with my order, some merchandise I had not ordered. I was told that payment for this merchandise would launch a subscription to receive their product every two months. The bill every two months was over $95.00.
I did not respond to IQ Derma because I believed that they would not be able to charge my credit card again. I am in the practice of keeping all products sent to me without my requesting them and not paying for them. Returning products or paying for them always results in not being able to get rid of them, so I never return anything I didn't order and I never pay.
IQ Derma billed PayPal. They put the charges through as a subscription, and Pay Pal paid the charges. I was not aware of this until two months later, when I received another shipment of the products from IQ Derma with another invoice stating that the charges had been paid by PayPal.
In addition to the fact that they used the MasterCard more than once, they also used it after it had expired. This was worse than actually using my own credit card, because at least when a credit card expires it can't continually be used after that.
I contacted the merchant, who would only cancel my subscription and refused to refund the money.
I then contacted PayPal and told them that they put through charges on a credit card that was only supposed to be used once, thereby signing me up for a subscription I did not want. They told me my only recourse was to dispute the charges with the merchant.
I hold PayPal and IQ Derma equally responsible. I used the service offered by PayPal with a false sense of security believing that no one could get hold of a credit card and bill it without my consent. This was FALSE ADVERTISING on their part, and they would not accept any of the responsibility for what happened.
I would never have ordered from a site like IQ Derma without feeling that sense of security that they could only bill the card ONE TIME. I am aware of the practices of some of these companies and would never have opened myself up for this practice if I did not believe I was protected by the service PayPal advertised and sold me.
Betrayed
Boca Raton, Florida
U.S.A.
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