SMC or Specialty Merchendise Corporation and their affiliate website hosting, EMC E-merchant club is guilty of fraudulent charges and providing false information. After signing up with the company and receiving our "business packet", if you could even call it that, we quickly decided to cancel our membership because we could see it was just a big scam. After calling the number to cancel we were told we could only cancel by sending back the kit, which was just a few catologes and we paid $39.95 for, and sending a written letter of cancellation. We were told that we could cancel our website over the phone, which we immediatly did. A few weeks after doing everything we were told to do in order to cancel, we had two charges appear on our credit card. One was for $39.95 for the second month of the SMC membership we had cancelled, and the second was for $29.95 for the website we had cancelled. I called both phone numbers and was told that they never received their packet and cancellation letter at SMC, so they never cancelled our account. When I called the number for the Website charge, they seemed to be a bit more helpful and told me that after looking in their computer that they saw we had cancelled and apologized for the charge, promising that they would reverse it. About a week later, on Aug. 20th, I received an e-mail from EMC stating that the charge had been reversed and it would be back in my account within 24-48 hours. About a week later I still had not received the refund. I called their customer service number and was told there was a mistake and the refund had not been processed. They put me on hold, came back and said they had spoke to their accounting department and the refund had gone through and would be available by the end of the business day. Well, that never happened. I have now called them every day since, and keep getting different stories. There is never an available supervisor to speak with, even though the operator is always able to put me on hold to speak to a supervisor. Finally on September 11th I was told by the operator that he physically went to the supervisor and saw him take my refund to be processed. He assured me it would be available in my account by the next day. On the 12th... STILL NOTHING!!! I called and was told by another operator that it was processed, but takes up to 48 hours to show up, and that the person I spoke to the previous day should not have told me it would be there the next day because once it is sent, they can not tell if it will take up to 48 hours or not. She promised, once again, that it would be there the next day. On Sept. 13th... NOTHING!!! I called and was told by another operator that it was never processed and that his supervisor was taking it to accounting and putting a rush on it so it would be in my account by the end of the day, of by the next morning. This seems odd since every other time I had called I was told there was absolutly no way to rush the refund. I once again asked to speak with this mystery supervisor, who is never available, and told he we busy. I asked for the names of the operators I had spoken to and the names of the supervisors who were working the days I called and was told by the operator that he could not give me that information. All this company does is take your money and gives you nothing in return. Then they do everything they can to hold off on giving refunds, in hopes that you will just give up! Well, I am not giving up and I strongly encourage anybody else put in this situation not to either! My next step is going to be filing a small claims case against the company, not for the measly $29.95, but more for the principal. If anyone else has this experience, please let me know... If we get enough people a class action suit could be filed, and this scam of a company could be shut down!!!
0 comments