Like other people who have filed complaints here on usacomplaints.com, I was charged by Hound.com after attempting to cancel my trial membership at the end of the membership period.
The fine print on their terms does indeed say that you have to cancel by telephone call to a toll number in California, during California business hours. They say that this is to provide security for their users. However, since they allow you to join, and provide credit card details, etc., online, their cancellation policy is a transparent tactic to get membership fees from people like me who don't read all the details in the terms of service and assume, quite sensibly, that if you can sign up online you can cancel the same way.
The rip-off nature of their cancellation policy is even more apparent when you consider that they have members worldwide, but the only way to cancel is by a phone call to a California number during local business hours - an onerous and unfair requirement for people outside the state.
In addition, in much of the world, such as the UK, companies are required to refund membership fees on a pro-rated basis when someone cancels.
Compounding the situation for me is the clearly inadequate customer support.in addition to not responding to my initial emails with my complaint, to date, customer support has never responded to an issue I raised during my trial membership - a fault with the company's job search system (a search limited to the San Francisco region repeated turned up a job in Texas).
And the email from customer support I received regarding my membership charges was full of typos and grammatical errors, further undermining any confidence in the company and making it seem like more of a scam:
"Dear User,
Thank you for your email to Hound.
On review of your account, we found that you created your hound a/c on 01-19 with our 7 days free trial and 3 monthly subscriptions on recurring basis. Your free trial got over on 01-25 and you got a charge on 01-26 which is your billing, and by the time you called to cancel your account on 01-26, you were already charged for the current billing cycle as on 01-26.
As per the policy in the "Terms of Use", it is stated that you need to call before your billing date to avoid further charges. We request you to please go through the "Terms of Use", once again, the way you did while signing up with us and accepting the same.
However, since you were charged for the current billing cycle, you would still have complete access to your account until 04-26, and would not be charged further.
We value your association and apologize for any inconvenience or confusion caused to you."
To reiterate: an exploitative cancellation policy, a search engine that doesn't work properly and terrible (and ungrammatical) customer support add up to a real rip-off of a company.
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