I ordered the. 99 trial of Celebrity White Teeth on February 5. I clearly read the terms and conditions and understood that, I quote from their website, "If you contact customer service to terminate your enrollment within fourteen (14) days of the date that you enroll in the Program, you will not receive any additional product and you will not be charged anything else." I contacted the company via email to cancel my membership on February 12, and asked for an email confirmation of my cancellation. I received a response on February 15 that stated, "Thank you for your email and update. You may refer with the following information: If you have further questions you may contact our Customer Support by calling the number below." This email also had a "ticket number" and listed "status: closed". I assumed that meant that my membership was canceled, since I contacted them within the proper timeframe, received a response without any further instructions, and had a "number" to provide if there were any questions. However, on February 26, I saw that I was charged $149.95 for the membership fee.
Of course, I was furious since I had followed their instructions in their Terms and Conditions. I contacted them immediately, and was told that there was no record of these emails, and unless I had a "cancellation number", my account was not canceled. WHAT??? I was told to send all of this information to their refund request division (I specifically asked several times to speak to them directly and was told that this could ONLY be done by email, yet apparently a cancellation CANNOT?). Anyway, I was told that I would receive a response within 3-5 days. Within an hour, I had a "DENIED REFUND" and was told that because my membership was still "open" after my 14 day period, there would be no refund. They never acknowledged their part that their customer service representative had neglected to even put this into their computer or give me further instructions if this was not the proper channel. It's all such a scam and they are not even willing to own up to it! Maybe I should have "called" instead of "emailed", but when they specifically said "contact customer service", that's exactly what I did. If that was not the right way, he should have clearly told me on the response that this would NOT cancel my membership, and that I needed to CALL and get a CANCELLATION NUMBER in order for it it be valid. I think they purposely misled me after I sent the email.
I will be filing a complaint with the BBB as soon as I am done here, although I'm not sure it will matter. There are several complaints already out there on the BBB site as well as MANY others.
I will also be disputing this charge with my bank on Monday. This is now an unauthorized charge, as I have proof of my cancellation, and have their Terms and Conditions to back that up — i.E. CONTACT customer service within 14 days.
It's disappointing that companies like this have to operate so shady in order to make money. As a business owner myself, I could never treat my customers like this and stay in business. Hopefully if enough of us make noise about their lousy business practices, more people will be afraid to buy from them and will look for more reputable companies. I wish I would have! I have learned a hard lesson that cost me $149.95!
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