LiveCareer.com is a website offering services to people to construct their resume. I used this service in September to write a new resume for my wife and paid a $4.95 fee to utilize the various resume templates they displayed.in the fine print, it was stated that I had access to the resume information for 7 days along with the fee I paid. What I did not realize, if I did not cancel within 7 days, a monthly fee would be charged to my account. I had paid the basic fee using my debt card bank account so they had my financial information. Without my knowledge nor my consent, they started making monthly withdrawals of $34.95. This continued for almost 3 months until I discovered that these monthly withdrawals were being made.
I called LiveCareer.com on November 23, and got their billing department, located in the Philippines and talked with the person there, who was somewhat challenged using the English language. They immediately agreed to cancel the upcoming November payment. After all, they have a money back policy. I was quite upset with the operator I was talking to so I asked to speak to the supervisor. The supervisor reminded me that I had agreed to allow these ongoing monthly charges and I assured him that had I realized that I was subject to these charges I would not have used the website. I asked him to refund the other 2 months (Sept & Oct) payments that had already been withdrawn. He said that he did not have the authority to do so and that he would have to email the headquarters in San Francisco for authorization. He said, give me a couple of days. The company did credit my bank account for the November payment. However, nothing happened about the previous 2 payments.
While talking to the supervisor, he gave me an address for the headquarters in San Francisco along with a couple of phone number he thought might connect me to that office. However, he said that he had no way to directly contact this office by phone... Only by email. I thought that was quite unusual that he had not direct contact with headquarters.
A week later, I called both numbers and was again connected to their office in the Philippines. Next I went online to look up their headquarters address in the San Francisco yellow pages. No such company was listed. However, when I used the online map, when I entered the office address in CA it was redirected to an address on Madison Ave in New York City. There was a phone number listed for that location and when I called it, I was again connected with the office in the Philippines. I was eventually connected to the same supervisor in that office. I asked why can't I talk to the offices located in the USA and he informed me that they were a world-wide company with offices located in several countries. They have over 10 million customers world-wide.
I think it is highly unusual that a company with millions of customers and offices in two major US cities does not have a listed phone number here in the USA. I also have concluded that his company "traps" it customers with additional and unnecessary fees that are charged month after month without providing any services to their customers. I consider myself to be very careful with my purchases on the internet and feel like that I have become of victim of a very organized "scam." However, I am a very persistant person and I don't tolerate it when someone attempts to "con" me. Probably most people would not take the time to investigate a situation like this one. Most people would be satisfied with getting a refund for 1 monthly fee and consider the other monthly fees to be the cost of learning a lesson the hard way.
If Livecareer, Inc really has 10 million customers, and if each of these customers gets $34.95 "stolen" from their bank account each month, it will equal $349.5 million each month. Whoever got this "scam" going is making a bundle at our expense.
The Livecareer website should probably be shut down completely. At least, they should be forced to remove the "automatic" monthly billing feature from the same box on their website where a customer makes a selection for using their service for a one-time purchase. They clearly have designed it so that the average person will be deceived into agreeing to allowing them to make monthly withdrawals from your bank account.
This is another warning... Buyer beware.
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