Beware Of Free Trials - Amazon

I just thought I would give everyone a heads up on amazon prime offer of a free trial. I signed up to this thinking after the free trial ended I would be asked if I would then wish to continue. I didn't recieve said email reminding me that I had signed up and that my free trial was about to end and woke up this morning to find that amazon had charged to my bank account £79! This has made my account overdrawn.

I immediatly cancelled the membership and was told that I would only recieve £72 of the £79 back as a refund, even though it just started yesterday. I then contacted amazon who said of course this was an error and said they would refund the whole amount. However this will take 2-3 days to process. In the meantime my account is overdrawn by an unplanned amount and will be charged £10 a day until amazon give me my refund.

I just thought I would warn others out there about this.

 

I hate Amazon's marketing of Prime. I have had to actively say No on more occasions than I can remember during checkout. My Daughter got suckered into Prime by a similar "click to opt out" type device. Having made the mistake she decided to keep it, as she buys from them quite often, but I still hate the marketing approach.

Perhaps I should write to Amazon saying "In order to avoid buying prime, which I don't want, I am constantly having to avoid accidentally selecting it. You are hereby on notice that if I do accidentally select it I will expect a full refund, including any consequential loss such as causing my bank account to go overdrawn"

I buy sheet music for my daughter from an excellent online site. They offer a 10% discount if I pay them £10 (or something like that) annually. Every risk that I will not buy enough from them in 12 months to justify it ... or that they won't send a reminder in good time so I can "stock up" before the 12 months runs out ... why on earth not just give me a Loyalty Discount so that if I have bought £X in the last 12 months I get Y% discount.

Far too much crafty-marketing is the norm IMHO, and I pigeon-hole companies that do it as suffering from Greed and Avarice

 

Mr Jane thinks I could contest the bank charges for an overdraft I did not authorise, as I have no planned over draft the bank shold have regected the charges.

Is this worth a try?

 

Yeah, but there are so many Sharp Practices out there, in this case both Amazon catching you out and the Bank helping themselves to a fee, that the consumer is bound to fall foul of them on a regular basis.

Both Mrs K and Miss K have incurred whopping parking fines for parking where they thought was fine - fine means fine in the eyes of the council of course :( One was a car park divided into two, and Miss K bought a ticket from the wrong "half" - so she had a perfectly valid ticket (had not tried to dodge the charge), but no leniency shown by the council nor the car park ombudsman. Mrs K parked in a an area deemed to be "Staff Only". No markings at all in that area, but there was a sign on an adjacent area (and if you knew and looked carefully you would realise), again no mitigating circumstances acknowledged.

It didn't used to be like that in the days before Greed and Avarice

Mrs K and I consistently move our business away from such organisations. I don't buy insurance from the cheapest source, as I assume that there are hidden catch-you-out penalties used to facilitate the cheap price. I go through a broker to whom I pay a fee and task him with finding the best deal for me. I expect him to know the ins and outs and not choose a policy that is not going to pay out for some spurious reason. I don't use Sharkleys, anymore, a bank that my family has given significant amounts of business to for generations, because a) they shafted me and b) they have been fined £BILLIONS for illegal activities (why does ANYONE deal with a crook like that? how come they are allowed to stay in business?)