I started seeing a charge on my bank statement in December that read Shop Essentials with a fee of $19.95 attached to it. My husband and I assumed that I must have purchased a gift while Christmas shopping that I had forgot about. We dimissed it because, again, I had been doing a lot of shopping.
Yesterday my husband went to put money into our account (we had planned on closing this accout, but I still had a gym membership coming out, which is the only money we keep in it) and he noticed it was overdrawn. It was overdrawn because of Shop Essentials! He and the bank employee contacted the business and they cancelled the account and told him I had signed up for their services in September. They also offered to refund the January deduction. I assured my husband I never signed up for a "Discounted Gift Card Service", which is what they claim they are. The bank informed him that they needed to speak with me to file an affadavid to get my money back. I contacted the bank and they processed some information over the phone for me. Within minutes, the bank was callling me back and told me he sees this particular company all the time doing this to other customers!!! (For the record, the bank was great!) The bank employee called Shop Essentials with me on the line and they refunded 4 months of fees, yes, 4 months, no problem, no questions asked. They obviously know that what they are doing is wrong and don't have any proof to justify that you signed up for this "service".
From reading other entries, I understand that Restaurants.com was the company that most likely sold my information. I did purchase $25 certificates from Restaurants.com on 9/9/09, because they had a promotion for that day only, not knowing it would lead to this! I want to know how these companies get away with this robbery. I was lucky we noticed it when did and not a year later!
0 comments