Great Fun debited our account for $11.99 in December. After determining that neither my wife nor I had signed up for this, I called the company. The information they cited as being my information that I signed up with was correct only in my name. No other info matched. The person I spoke to said they were sorry, they were canceling the account as we spoke and the money would be refunded. It was. Within 5-10 days the money went back into my account. Problem solved right? Nope.
January's statement revealed another debit, phone call resulted in similar assurances and I stressed that I had canceled something I had not signed up for in the first place. The representative, Joey (employee #100169) affirmed that the account was listed as canceled. The money was not returned this time, however, and another charge was debited on 02/01/08.
A call to the company was handled by Adrin (#33202) who asked that a fax of the bank statement be sent showing the charges along with a request for cancellation and refund. After excising all sensitive information with scissors, this was done. No confirmation of receipt was made and a follow up call met with assurances that the monies were being refunded. This has not occurred yet and today (03/07/08) showed another debit.
My call was answered by a very rude person who's English was so poor that her name was unintelligible. I asked for a supervisor and was put on hold for 45 minutes. When the phone was finally picked up again, I was informed that there was not a single supervisor left in the building. What a co-inkydink. After arguing with a brick wall for approximately 25 minutes, I assured her that I would indeed call back first thing Monday morning.in the meantime I would be busy talking to the FBI Internet Fraud Task Force. She hung up on me.
The local FBI office said it sounded like possible identity theft and referred me to the local Secret Service office. The agent there was sympathetic but stated they were not going to open a Federal case over less than $50 dollars. I left him with a nugget of wisdom that if I were only one of 100 or more thousand people this was happening to, they were possibly funding a nice little terrorist operation since I'm pretty sure one of the reps was Osama. Maybe THAT will get him off his duff.
My bank has been pretty good about agreeing to waive the stop payment fee since I went through the trouble of calling the Feds. They are likewise going to open their own investigation and the result is likely that the bank itself will return the money to our account. I will definitely call Great Fun again on Monday and not be as polite and professional as I have been to date. I may call the Secret Service again and let a different agent know that I am not the only one this seems to be happening to and it would behoove them to at least make some inquiries. I would be curious to see how quickly the money can get back to my account once an SS Agent identifies himself to them. Perhaps then I will have some Great Fun.
Scott
Shelby, North Carolina
U.S.A.
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