I noticed a charge of $6.95 on my credit card account today. I searched and found that it's been appearing every month since May. It was for "WPI IFRIENDS VIP." I didn't remember signing up for anything recently so I did a little research and came across multiple examples of the same thing happening to other people.
Luckily, a few of the complaints also had the reply from the company. They claimed they had a "customer is always right" policy and they had refunded all of the money that had been charged in some of the cases I found. Thinking it was looking pretty good I contacted their customer service number, 1-800-IFRIEND.
The guy was reasonably polite but said he was unable to do more than refund me the most recent charge as a "courtesy." He said I had signed up for some service with the monthly fee waived ONLY if certain conditions were met and I hadn't met the conditions. I told him didn't even remember signing up for the free version and certainly didn't rember anything that was going to incur charges. Forgetting a free trial I can believe but things that might cost me money usually stand out in my mind. The response was "it's a subscription fee, not a usage fee." It doesn't matter that I haven't been on their site since.
By their own stated policy, they still owe me three months of fees. I refuse to believe that I knowingly agreed to any subscription agreement and then forgot about it completely. It's not a lot of money but it's the principal. However they have the subscription system set up is obviously misleading since this same thing happens to so many people.
I can't trust any company that uses a system that automatically switches you to a pay program without any warning. They're probably making most of their money off of the people who don't notice the charges or don't get mad enough to complain when they do.
0 comments