Morning folks,
Just wanted to drop you a note and tell you of the incident that happened to me yesterday.
Yesterday was the last day of my Voices.com preferred paid membership… and as I had mentioned in a previous blog post … I no longer wished to be a member of their voice over marketplace site… I’m doing ok on my own.
Anyway I got an email from paypal telling me that I just sent voices.com $199 … which I don’t have in my paypal account… so would be taken out of my bank account and send to voices.com.
I vaguely remember that when I subscribed to voices.com I had ticked a box … or did not untick a box… that said that this payment would be annual and a subscription… so a few months back I had scoured the voices.com membership site looking to untick this box. I couldnt find it… and figured that it would ask me if i wanted to renew my membership at which time I would say no… and that would be that.
Nope… the payment was made and it turns out that even though the unticked box was at the voices.com site when I paid last year… the instructions stay with the paypal server as a subscription order… so now I am down $199 taken out of my canadian bank account (so paypal is going to make money off changing my canuck dollars to american dollars…) then its gonna send them to voices.com.
I called up paypal yesterday and stayed a nice 10 minutes on the phone waiting for someone to talk to me… after going through all the verification BS the lady finally told me that the transaction is in transit … and they can’t help me at all… its with the seller now.
So I sent an email to voices.com yesterday… but no one was working yesterday … or today for that matter…. and I requested from Voices.com (a canadian company) to refund my money to me or if possible cancel the original transaction so that my money wont get taken out of my canadian bank account… but I doubt that there is time for that…
I had requested that they pay me back via a canadian bank to bank transfer… which means I wont have to pay even more exchange fees transfering the money back from paypal to my canadian bank account.
So now its a waiting game… I was hoping to put that money to use some other way… but it just goes to show folks that you shouldn’t leave boxes ticked that you don’t want them ticked.
Anything similar happen to any of you good folks?
Taji
On another subject for a moment cause I do not have your private email but would certainly like to have it….mine is above.
The same thing happened to me with Women in Film membership and again with an entertainment organization I pay for annually. But both, after a bit of a delay, refunded my monies. I expect your transaction with Voices.com will turn out just fine. I find Stephanie and husband David, owners, to be lovely and honest people.
On another matter…if you could email me privately today it would be lovely.
Thank you and all my best to you, friend.
bettye Zoller
Hi Taji. Having been a paypal user since 2000, subscription payments are something I know a little about. 😉 If you go into your account and use the pulldown menu to search through all your subscriptions created in the last year, you should be able to locate the Voices.com one and unsubscribe from that subscription – which would have kept you from having the $199 charged again. I can well understand how it would be frustrating to find though.
As for refunding, I *think* that for about 14 days, the Voice.com folks should be able to just cancel the payment with the click of a mouse and the money will likely be transferred back to your paypal account. I’m sure they wouldn’t want to charge you that money if you didn’t want to continue with them. It’ll probably all be resolved on Monday. They’re good about that kind of stuff.
I hope you have a wonderful weekend! All the best, — Jodi
Online payments aren’t always as secure as the sites want you to believe. A few months ago, money was taken out of my PayPal account twice, by an unknown company from India.
I immediately asked my bank to close the account linked to the PayPal account, and they successfully stopped the money transfer.
PayPal also suspended the suspicious transaction and made sure that my money did not end up in the wrong hands.
Here’s the advice my bank manager gave to me: open a dedicated account for PayPal transactions only. As soon as money comes in, transfer it out of that account so as not to have a balance that could be open to fraudulent transactions.
PayPal tries to sell you on their credit card. Don’t fall for it! That’s where the crooks go first when they’re looking for your hard-earned cash.
I recently signed up for MoneyBookers. Care to share any of your experiences with this service?
Hi Jodi… Hello Folks,
The issue was resolved yesterday without the money having to be withdrawn from my bank account. Kim from billing was nice enough to cancel the transaction and so the withdrawal was stopped before it got started.
Thanks for all the suggestions you guys made.
Paul If I could open a second account I would… It makes allot of sense.. but since the account connected to my paypal is in canada (which means we are considered overseas… ridiculous right? We share a border) it means that I cannot open a second account while I am in egypt and dedicate it to the paypal account.
Also as a muslim I require a bank account that is interest free (or usury free) so that means that I would have to go to the nice folks in Scotia Bank or TD Canada Trust and ask them to open an islamically permissible account. Not all commercial banks carry this kind of account so often the bank accounts manager looks a bit confused.
Honestly I wish I had an american bank account with a debit card on my end here so I don’t have to keep getting charged exchange rates whenever I transfer money to my canadian bank account.
WHAT A BOTHER!!!
Incidentally Jodi… I don’t subscribe to any services.. and the voices.com was kinda sorta just an accident… even so I wish they would have sent me a warning email telling me that next week we will be charging you x amount of money for your subscription to voices.com… at which time I would have been more active in trying to cancel the subscription.
thanks everyone for your concern and suggestions.
taji
Some websites are pretty nasty when they do automatic subscriptions. I tried to subscribe to a website once, but accidentally clicked on a link twice. I was charged twice… I immediately unsubscribed even though I had paid for it. I do not like to be taken advantage of especially when I have been a member for over a year already. I choose not to give out names because this was years ago and would rather think that I have moved on.