VOCAL | FRAUD | “MISTAKES” | CON ARTISTS
Vocal Just Charged Me $10 Without Even Being A Member (update #3)
Suffice to say I am fuming… 😡💢
Vocal Media once again proved to me they cannot be trusted to guard the dog I do not have, let alone with paying them $10 per month to chase the treasure at the end of the rainbow with each of their rigged “contests.”
But this time they went way too far. I check out my e-banking a while ago to see if some tips arrived and, to my astonishment, I see a completely unsolicited charge of 9.91 € ($10) — see header image.
As I wrote back in March here…
..I deleted my Vocal account 9 months ago. First Vocal+ then altogether, including all my articles. Seemingly everything was erased, including my credit card data. But, alas, they weren’t. They kept them, internally. For… rainy days perhaps.
I suppose they are going to either claim this was a mistake or that I asked it. Roughly 6 months ago I got one of their carrot offers for 4 months of free V+. It was a limited time offer and the usual crap.
I did not bite but roughly 2 months later I did. I thought, despite knowing what they are, I do not have anything to lose right? Who knows, I might win a contest after all, I thought. However I was notified (in-web, not via email), after using the link they supplied me via email that the offer had expired.
That was crystal clear right? So it looks like it was indeed a “limited time offer”, I thought, and never thought about it again. We each went our separate ways.
However it looks like, somehow, in secret, via some unknown account that almost certainly does not exist (not my old one, this was transferred to this guy in April already), the 4-month offer started running internally (only) right when I clicked that link.
Why only internally? Because in the months that followed I kept getting emails from them pestering me to sign up for Vocal+. So there was zero suggestion the offer could have been activated by mistake.
I was both informed it had expired and kept getting promo emails from them to sign up for V+ to join this or the other contest. And now I see that unsolicited credit card charge, roughly when the 4 months I never took ended…
I immediately sent them an email asking them to refund my credit card and then actually erase all my personal data, incl. my credit card. In the morning I will also call my bank to let them know the charge was unsolicited and I do not recognize it.
Once more, one way or the other, the good little con men of Vocal Media make me waste my time with them. And I have a feeling this is only the beginning… 😩
update: The phone service of my bank is currently closed but I found their web complaint form and let them know what happened.
I also checked my emails again. No warning or suggestion about the V+ charge and no notification after the fact either…
update #2: Vocal thankfully refunded me the next day, though of course there was a small loss due to the USD being weak against the Euro the last few weeks. The difference went to ‘the markets.’
They refunded my credit card directly, not via Stripe, like I asked them. My loan sharking bank gets a 3€ fee for every wire transfer above 5€ from an EU country (including from Greece), so I’d need to split the refund in two parts to wire it from Stripe.
Remy did not explain why I was billed out of the blue after 9 months, but what matters is that I was refunded. He also wrote “I have also gone ahead and removed your payment details.” Hence such ‘mistakes’ hopefully will not happen again.
update #3: I also got the forex difference of 0.62€ the next day, marked as “Monetary Adjustments.” I did not ask for that, I think that was automatic (not from Vocal apparently). So… I’m finally done.
