How $47 can Hurt Your Business Reputation?

15 years ago

If it were me, I would refund the charge. I'd expect the same from any other company, not because they don't have the right to charge me, but because it promotes a positive image and I may come back.

Besides, you are just opening yourself up to a Paypal dispute if you don't.

Thanks
1 reply

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Lance K 15 years ago

3) Other...

Which is....FOR SURE #2 (immediate, courteous refund)

PLUS

offer them an additional month free with no automatic rebill. Tell them I'd contact them in 30 days to see if they wanted to stay on. Depending on their attitude and the vibe I got from them, I may even offer 30 days of free email coaching or some other valuable add on as further apology for making the process confusing. And I'd thank them for bringing to my attention a point of confusion in my sales process.
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Ken Preuss

15 years ago

No question about it. I would refund the charge immediately.

Ken

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vbkid

15 years ago

Hey,

Well I believe in customer value, and every customer I pull into my funnel can generate up to $2,500 for the year in backend sales.

So, I would probably email them back, I would apologize or the confusion and say something on the lines that in our TOS it does say no refunds, but test out the membership for the month, I would tell them to contact me at the end of the month if you still want to leave I will send a full refund to their account, but to contact me before the next pay period.

Three things will happen:

1) The person will enjoy their stay and become a full time member and enter my business funnel

2) They will leave, I will refund, all is good

3) They will forget all about the email correspondence, and my business will profit, they will cancel the second month.

Business is business...

Thanks

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Mark Kaye

15 years ago

Refund the charge.

Good news travels fast...bad news travels faster.

When people do a search for your product would you rather them find a random blog post about how "Wonderful Your Customer Service Was" or about "how you stole their money?"

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vbkid

15 years ago

Lance stole my thunder, stop typing so fast!

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1 reply

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Michael Mayo

15 years ago

Well Warriors,

The Victim in this case is Me!

I sent an email to my sponsor on the 5th of this month asking how to cancel my membership and received no reply.

On 01/14/09 the trial ended and the charge of $47 showed up in my Paypal account from out of no where. It wasn't in my subscriptions any where to be found and still isn't.

I contacted their customer support via a Help Desk.
This was my request:

I was under the impression that after the 14 day trial for $1 my
membership would expire. I was not aware that the membership was set
up as a recurring payment and there was no way for me to cancel it via
paypal. I had looked at my Paypal recurring payments and this membership
was not listed there.

After the 14 day trial period I did not want to continue the membership
with XXXXXXXX and thought it would expire if I did not make
the $47. payment to maintain it.

Please refund the $47.

Today is the first day after the 14 day trial and the payment is still
pending via my Paypal account.

Thank you,
Have a Great Day.

P.S. Your system looked good although I didn't feel it was something I would feel comfortable doing. Sorry and Thanks for the trial offer.

Here is Their Reply:Names were removed so their is no Naming Names

-- do not edit --

Michael,

Our customer support team personnel has replied to your support request #499291

Michael,

When you first signed up, you agreed to the 14-day Test Drive to set up your XXXXXXXXXX back office. After the 14 days were up, your account transitioned onto a standard monthly billing cycle. This was covered under the terms of service that you read and agreed to when you signed up.

Our members now have the capability to manage their own accounts, whether that be cancellation, credit card update or park. Go into your XXXXXX back office and click on My Accounts > My Membership to cancel your account. Per the aforementioned terms, we do not offer refunds.

Regards,
Scott
XXXXXX

We hope this response has sufficiently answered your questions. If not, please do not send another email. Instead, reply to this email or login to your account for a complete archive of all your support request and responses.

Thanks

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Michael Mayo

15 years ago

Nathan,

That is correct.

Michael

Originally Posted by NathanFalkner

Just to be clear, under this scenario, the customer was NOT presented
with a recent activity notation next to the transaction that said words
to the effect of "Subscription Creation"? The transaction was instead
given the notation of "Payment" by PayPal even though it was a $1 trial
for 14 days that would automatically convert into a $47 subscription at
the end of the 14 day trial period?

Thanks
2 replies

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Michael Oksa

15 years ago

Originally Posted by NathanFalkner

That's really perplexing, and points to a potential problem within the
PayPal infrastructure. I'm not aware of any configurable options that
would permit a merchant to create a subscription billing within PayPal
without having it show up in the end-users list of active subscriptions.

You might want to dispute the $47 through PayPal, explaining that
their system did not permit you to cancel. The merchant might really
be under the assumption you're lying -- assuming that PayPal provided
you with the ability to self-terminate your subscription. Either that,
or the merchant has cleverly engineered a way of creating a subscription
that disguises itself within PayPal as a one-time payment. Of course,
it would be "nice" if the merchant just gave you the money back, but
this potentially exposes a very serious flaw within PayPal's system.

That would be another reason to ask for a refund.

Funny how dishonest people and companies don't trust others.

It would be different if Michael had waited 29 days AFTER the renewal to ask for the refund, but he didn't.

---------------------------

I would love to know who the company is (via PM is fine).

---------------------------

Also, to me it looks like the response from customer no-service was pre-written which means this problem is too common.

---------------------------

A 14 day trial is fine, and it sounds like they made this clear. But what good is it if there's no way to cancel?

For that matter, PayPal doesn't make it intuitive for people to cancel either, but that's another subject.

All the best,
Michael

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1 reply

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Michael Mayo

15 years ago

Well, There is not much I can do except wait for the transaction to go
from pending to completed in my PP account.

We have bounced support emails back and forth 3 times now and they say
they are not going to refund me as per the terms of their service
agreement.

It really isn't about the $47. it is about the way they didn't send or tell me
any way to cancel it. I thought it was kinda convenient that my sponsor
never replied to my request of how to cancel...Hummm...

I'll file a PP Dispute as soon as the Transaction is marked completed in my account.

Have a Great Day!
Michael

Thanks
2 replies

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Nathan Hangen 15 years ago

Shady! I fail to see how $47 is worth the risk of having a bad reputation. I too would love the name of this company.
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Mike Hill

15 years ago

Originally Posted by Michael Mayo

Well, There is not much I can do except wait for the transaction to go
from pending to completed in my PP account.

We have bounced support emails back and forth 3 times now and they say
they are not going to refund me as per the terms of their service
agreement.

It really isn't about the $47. it is about the way they didn't send or tell me
any way to cancel it. I thought it was kinda convenient that my sponsor
never replied to my request of how to cancel...Hummm...

I'll file a PP Dispute as soon as the Transaction is marked completed in my account.

Have a Great Day!
Michael

If all else I would contact PayPal and see what this company did exactly... It may be a breach of PayPal Terms of Service by not giving you adequate notification of the monthly charges being automated and that you'd have to cancel in order to stop future payments.

Mike Hill

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knmrwarrior 15 years ago

I was fortunate enough to have the opposite experience this month.

I bought an ebook a couple of months ago. I picked up a few new strategies from it and was happy with the purchase. I also signed up for the OTO - a recurring series of video tutorials. I gave this a few months but while it would be ok for beginners, it was far too basic for me. I asked the owner to cancel my membership for this reason. Not only did he cancel my membership, no questions asked, he also refunded my membership to date. This was way above and beyond the call of duty. This is the type of behaviour that inspires customer loyalty.

Despite your experience, there are a lot of good guys out there.

If I were you I would forward this thread to them and shame them into decent behaviour.

Der
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MaxReferrals

15 years ago

#2.

... so you can get back to focusing on other more productive things.

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1 reply

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Michael Mayo 15 years ago

Wow, This is weird!

Paypal just called me and I'm on the phone with them about this
transaction right now...lol

Is that the Power of Attraction or what???
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- 1 reply
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- jmidas 15 years ago
  
  Shady is the word I thought of first as well.
  
  I can't believe paypal called you - I went through hell trying to get a legitmate error corrected a few months ago with them (double billed by merchant - and pay pal did absolutley nothing to help - the merchant finally corrected it nearly 2 months later).
  
  Thanks
  
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Scott Ames

15 years ago

2. Just refund them their Money and say "Thanks for trying or services
Sorry it wasn't what you needed?"

I personally hate getting trapped by continuity offers.

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IMChick

15 years ago

If I understand this correctly from the original post and the Mike's clarification later in the thread, he isn't on the business decision maker's end in this transaction, he's the customer.

I agree that this should be refunded without any other issues, and if they were clever and looking forward in the business, comp a month 'free' to the cancelled customer.

Since this has happened to you and they seem to be difficult about it, open a dispute with paypal on this and get a credit card charge back going. While the company 'technically' can be right or in the stronger position of a no-refund policy here, they're missing the boat. There's a Paypal loophole on the sales receipt for the recurring charge you didn't know about regardless of their terms of service. Looks alot like paypal would consider this an unauthorized charge.

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1 reply

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Michael Mayo 15 years ago

OK, after talking with PP, they say that I must wait for the transaction to
go from pending to complete before they can take action on my behalf.

It was funny because while I was looking up the PP Customer service No. when
my wife called me to tell me that PP had just called the house asking me
to verify a few transactions on my account...lol

I just added one to their list!...

Anyway, they seemed very eager to help me resolve this issue and told me
what I will need to do to get the ball rolling after the transaction clears.

The reason I have to wait is the fact that this transaction was done
through the vendors merchant account using my PP Debit card.

That explains why the transaction did not show up in my recurring
payment section.

I guess I just wait now!

Have a Great Day!
Michael
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- 1 reply
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- zapseo 15 years ago
  
  Say what you like about PayPal -- but they've made some excellent improvements to their customer service as of late.
  
  The agents are courteous, knowledgeable and helpful
  (even if occasionally wrong.)
  
  I DID however, catch them taking money out of my account incorrectly (as a result of a resolved dispute) but they corrected it quickly.
  
  There are definitely ways that you can have subs set up in Paypal without them showing up. I know I've had them in the past ... pretty sure before they even had debit cards.
  
  Live JoyFully!
  
  Judy Kettenhofen, Profit Strategist/Copywriter
  NextDay Copy
  
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IMChick

15 years ago

Thanks for the update. I thought that this was a straight "click here" paypal transaction into your paypal account from the first description, which isn't how the original transaction was, so the clarification was good for me to understand how the actual charge went through.

Hopefully Paypal is now on board with a bit of investigation on this one. It will be interesting to know how the matter is resolved and how long it takes paypal to complete it.

Thanks
1 reply

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keyaziz 15 years ago

I hope you get it sorted! This happened to me and I tried to get refunded the day it happened..and they wouldn't..but nevermind..I hope you get your money back
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How $47 can Hurt Your Business Reputation?

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