I hope that thie complaint can help save someone (anyone) else the hassles that I"ve been through.
On December 4, I saw the Snuggie commercial on TV and went to www.freesnuggie.com to take a look. It said that the Snuggies were BOGO with a free booklight for each one - just additional shipping of $7.95 PER booklight!
I was out there looking at the items and it made me put in shipping informating (thereby snagging my address) and billing information (... And now my credit card) before I could go further - though I never clicked on a "submit" or "place order" or "ORDER NOW" button.
I kept getting "Would you like to order item X at price $Y with shipping price $Z?". I kept clicking no, I didn't want these offers. There was no way to get out of the ordering process or these additional "offers" at all. I found no cancel button or clear or undo or anything. There wasn't any way out, just one offer after another. They were ruthless.
Any unsuspecting person could easily spend hundreds of dollars on stuff that they didn't want/need just because there was no way to get out of the process. Eventually, I closed the browser and thought that all was good.
Until January 16, when I got an email saying that my order was shipped and including a tracking number with UPS. Imagine my confusion when I hadn't placed an order, much less received an order confirmation. At the same time, I noticed that I had a pending temporary charge on my credit card in the amount of $66.70 for an order that I never placed!!! Needless to say, the tracking number yielded no information at all about the supposedly shipped package.
On January 20, I received a card in the mail that said, in a nutshell, " your order has been delayed and will be shipped as soon as it comes available. If you want to cancel your order, send back this card, otherwise do nothing." So now I"m supposed to send this card to cancel an order that I never made - AFTER I get an email that says my order shipped? HUH???
I called the 800-663-8166 number that another dissatisfied customer placed in their report to find that I had to push buttons a ton of times to wind up getting nowhere. I finally pushed 0 and got a recording saying to call
1-800-566-2888 to speak to a customer service representative about cancelling my order.
After calling that number, I sat on hold for 30 minutes, listening to a recording every 20 seconds that said "Due to the holiday season, we're receiving an unusually high call volulme. Please hang up and place your call later in the week to receive quicker response". I wasn't about to hang up. I sat there for the 30 minutes waiting for the next available representative.
When I got a person on the phone, I got NOWHERE fast. She said their system is completely automated and that if it said I placed an order, then I placed it. I kept telling her that I hadn't, and that I couldn't get out of the stupid system, so I shut my browser and never said OK place this order. She said that since it's already in transit (right - no sign of it) that they can't cancel the order. The only thing they can do is AFTER they get the product back, they can refund the price of the product. So, I do that math... I get charged $66.70 for product that I didn't order, I pay to ship it back to them, and then they refund ONLY the cost of the item?
The card had an order number on it, which I placed into their order status screen on the website. It listed $34.90 for the cost of the item (BOGO at $19.95 turns into $34.90???) and shipping cost of $31.80. Stated shipping was $7.95 - where did $31.80 come from? That's 4X the shipping they say!!!
So, if I send the product back, paying whatever UPS charges or USPS charges, I"m out probably $50 for nothing but a hassle.
I'm filing a dispute with my credit card company and will be very careful to avoid Direct Merchandise at all times in the future.
PLEASE avoid this company. There are so many reports of a fraudulent nature regarding them. I wish I had seen this website first. I will check this website before I order anything from a company I haven't heard from from now on.
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