My daughter ordered a book through Amazon.com in mid December.in January, she realized the book had still not arrived, so she checked her Amazon account and was surprised to find no record of the order. Since she had supplied credit card info, we pulled up her credit card records and noticed a suspicious entry, a $9.99 charge from smartsavingscenter.com.
My daughter had no idea where that came from, so, putting aside the Amazon issue for the moment, we called the credit card company who informed us it was a monthly charge for a some kind of service. When we told them she had contracted for no service of any kind whatsoever, they told us to call the company, and supplied us with the phone number.
I called the number given (listed above) and somebody answered the phone saying something completely unintelligible. We said we needed information about something on a credit card bill, and he asked for the name. After spelling the name about 6 times, he "found" the account and said the bill was for their "service" which saves money with coupons and discounts. When I told him my daughter had never contracted for such a service, he said it came with the order of a book, and he gave the title. Imagine our surprise - it was the book that she thought she had ordered from Amazon!
The man said there is a seven-day free trial period for the "service" that had long passed, so we were liable for the $9.99. I argued about that, saying we could not be liable for something we never ordered, and he eventually said he would remove all charges.
But here's the best part. I then told him to cancel the book order, and he said he couldn't do that. When I asked why, he responded that the book was out of stock, so the order could not be canceled.??!! He said she should have received an email to that effect. No message had been received.
It seems pretty clear that the whole operation is bogus. I do not expect that my daughter's account with be credited, nor do I expect that the charges will stop, so we canceled the account and will dispute any ensuing charges.
I called Amazon to notify them of this, and the person I spoke to said he would relay the information to their security department.
0 comments