Buyer Be Aware

Yesterday I locked horns with an internet company. The short version of the story is included here, as a reminder to be careful when making purchases on the internet.

Last Thursday I needed to send a fax. My scanner, which worked just fine with my old operating system, has had problems functioning properly, since my upgrade to Windows XP.

I went to Microsoft to obtain their suggestions for faxing and clicked on a link to a faxing service. I was in a hurry so I scanned the website and saw that they had a $ 1.95 usage plan. I thought, at $ 2.50 a gallon, one fax would cost me less money than driving to the office, so I enrolled.

My signup went through with no problem and I submitted the fax to be sent. After about one hour, I received an email indicating that the fax could not be sent because of a problem on the receiving end.

Later, while routinely examining my checking account, I noticed that I had been charged $ 24.95 by this company. I was shocked, so I went back to the site and looked for anything that would indicate I owed them this type of money.

Sure enough, there was a very small link to a page where I would have been informed, if I had checked, that the company had a $ 4.95 setup charge and that they took $ 20.00 out of your account to prepay any charges. Furthermore, I would have learned that you needed to use up the $ 20.00 in charges within one month or the prepaid account expired.

There was no demand that I read this information page before this site accepted my account information and there was no mention of any such charges on any of the pages I encountered during the signup process.

I admit it was my fault for not fully examining what I was signing up for, but I think the site was purposely misleading. Typically, most sites, which participate in internet commerce, insist upon confirmation that you understand the terms of the transaction before they accept your application and charge your account.

Not this company. When I contacted them and asked that they refund my money, they agreed to refund the unused portion. I received a credit for $ 13.05.

I was being charged $ 11.90 for my error and my one-time failed fax attempt. They informed me that they did not charge for the failed fax attempt, but that they charged me $ 4.95 to set up the account, $ 1.95 for the prepaid account, and $ 5.00 to close the account.

As of this writing, they have agreed to return the rest of my money. I had written this reflection, with the company name mentioned at least three times. I forwarded them a copy, and they decided to refund the remainder of my money.

In 10+ years of doing business over the internet, I have never once experienced a problem like this. I felt angry when they first indicated that they would not refund the remainder of my money, but as I let that go and decided to use it as a lesson to help myself and others, the energy shifted.

I am not sure that threatening to publish their company name in my newsletters was the most loving thing to do, but they have decided to correct the flaw on their web site which lead to the confusion. Hopefully, this will keep others from repeating my mistakes. In that regard, it was perhaps a loving thing to do.

I hope my experience serves as a reminder for each of you to be aware of what you are agreeing to when purchasing something over the internet. I could have avoided the entire debacle if I had exercised common sense and looked for a full explanation of how this plan worked.

I, of course, would have never signed up for a $ 25.00 charge for a one time fax. That money could go a long way towards purchasing a scanner and fax software that my XP System liked. The whole experience has been a wake up call for me to pay more attention.