I ordered the "free trial" from Prado for myself and my cousin and had his shipped to him and mine to me but both billed to my debit card since we were both trying to quit smoking.
I had read all of the doctor reports and found no negative health reports so I was willing to try this out to see if it would help both of us since we wanted to quit.
I did read the terms of the agreement and actually printed them out as well. I even programmed the phone number into my phone and found a second no. (480-829-0154) in the terms of agreement that you could call if you had any questions. It stated that you could call the 800 number "anytime" if you needed to. I also set the date and alarm on my cell phone calendar to remind me to cancel my membership/order on day 10 so that I would not be billed the additional money for future shipments since I had ordered for 2 people.
Our packages came in 4 days after I ordered them and I opened mine immediately and began using it, my cousin did not thank goodness! I placed our orders at night, in doing so mine was on 4/1/10 and his was 4/2/10 since it was just after midnight.
On Saturday, April 10 I called the #800 as my handy, dandy cell phone reminded me and found that the company was closed. There was however a nice recording telling me that they are only open Mon-Fri, 8am-4:30pm mt and that if I needed to check the status of my order I could go to a website and look it up.
I decided to call the other number that I had from the contract and it to had the same recording. I figured I was ok since it was clearly not my fault that the company was closed during and on the 10th day of my "trial" period so I did not worry.
I was on my bank account website on Sunday, April 11, and noticed that there was 2 pending charges for the amount of $146.35. Naturally, I was ready to call my husband and yell at him for spending $300 on what was sure to be some ridiculous item when I noticed it was from the company that charged me for the Prado E-Cigarette.
I called the 2 numbers that I had for this company and received yet again the same recordings. Now being more than slightly panicked and reaching ticked off I called my bank to put a stop payment on these charges.
Pay attention here, I was told by Bank of America that since it was pending they could not stop payment. You heard me! It was not an ACH or check, it was a debit transaction and so they would not stop payment.
I gave them the full story of what happened and they told me that the transaction would go through on Tuesday night and that on Wednesday morning I could call and file a claim. At that point they would contact the company and try to get my money back for me.in the mean time I could call the company on Monday morning to see if they would stop the charge on my account. They told me that "hopefully you won't have to file a claim and all of this will be resolved."
After calling a total of 18 times with multiple times the company's phone answering with a recording simply saying "Goodbye" and hanging up, I got through to Jake. This is customer service that should be used in training videos. I explained to Jake my experience with the company over the weekend and he asked for my name to pull up the account. He then informed me that he would cancel my order but I would not be receiving an RMA # (needed to return your unused trial cigarettes) or a refund. I asked why and he laughed mocking me and said it was passed my 10 days.
I told him that I had called several times over the weekend but they were closed so I had no way of canceling and he said that "Nobody told you to wait until the weekend to cancel. You could have called Monday-Friday when we were here." I said that I would have had I known that they would have been closed but that the web site and terms of the contract don't state that. He said it wasn't his problem and I should have called earlier. I asked why I had to still pay when I did call and he said there was no proof since no one was there on the weekend to take my call.
I asked to speak to a manager and he told me he was the manager on duty. I asked to speak to his boss, he laughed at me saying, "That ain't gonna happen!"
"Excuse me?" He replied with the same answer. I asked him why and he said that "They don't talk to people like you."
He then told me that I was wasting his and my time was there anything else I needed besides the questions he had already answered and I asked for his name. He gave me his first, said they had no employee ID numbers and when I asked for his last name he said he was the only Jake at the company.
I called back later and spoke to someone named Aurora and told her what happened and she apologized to me. She claimed that they do not have access to override the system when it is passed the 10 days on an account and that you have to write to the company to request a refund.
Meanwhile I am out $300 and we have $126 to live off of until 4/23/10 when my husband gets paid again. That isn't much for a family of 4. Bank of America is hopeing (oh and praying because I told her she shouldn't just hope without praying) that all will work out and with any luck they MIGHT be able to get some of my money back by 4/21/10.
Please reconsider before ordering from this company. There are many out there and others offer times of availability and even e-mail canellation sites if you miss them when they are open. Almost all of them have a Trial Period. Just Check the terms before you order.
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