Flippy - I Rant, You Read

Sunday, July 19, 2009

early morning

SeattleCoffeeDirect.com, UrbanCoffeeDirect.com, WorldBeanCafe.com’s $2 or $5 trial is a SCAM!

I signed up for the $2 trial offer from SeattleCoffeeDirect.com to get godfather points for Mafia Wars on Facebook.  Yeah, that was stupid, but only in hindsight.  I assumed that Zynga, the company that owns Mafia Wars, wouldn’t associate themselves with downright thieves.  The $2 offer for two stainless steel mugs and two pounds of coffee, plus however many “godfather points” WAS a good deal.  I didn’t expect the company to outright lie in their terms & conditions: * Program Membership Terms and Conditions:   We want you to be happy with your order. As a customer of SeattleCoffeeDirect, you control your membership. You determine your semimonthly coffee selections and the frequency of your shipments. You may also opt out of our membership program at any time after you place your initial order. Feel free to contact us online by logging into your account at SeattleCoffeeDirect.com or by simply calling 866-794-2030.

You cannot “control your membership” by “logging into your account” because they don’t GIVE you an account to log into.  And, before you even GET your trial offer, they start charging away on your credit card, using MULTIPLE business names!!!  PayPal has been so slow to react that it’s caused overdraft charges on the bank account that I had attached to my Paypal card, even though I deleted the bank account info.  They’ve saved it, just so they can charge THIS FRAUD over and over and over again.  I’m now at 4 charges in a week, only one of them approved by me, the $2 charge.

July 12th, $2 charged by WorldBeanCafe.com but signed up supposedly with SeattleCoffeeDirect.com (I thought it would be a nice inexpensive give for someone) - authorized July 13th, $38.95 charged by WorldBeanCafe.com - NOT authorized July 17th, $38.95 charged by UrbanCoffeeDirect.com - NOT authorized July 18th, $38.95 charged by Urban Coffee Direct Evanston IL - NOT authorized

Conveniently, they’re charging these on weekends, when they’re supposedly closed.  Also, conveniently enough, they don’t have ANY email support.  There is no way to log “into your account” on their website, because their website doesn’t have accounts.  Their domains are registered with DomainsByProxy.com.  What are they hiding?  Who are they hiding?  Why are they going by so many different names?  Oh wait, I know the answer to that, so they can keep trying to charge people’s accounts, so that when one name is blocked, they can charge using another.

Hindsight is 20/20, but just look at all of these complaints, there are 395 just HERE, just under ONE name, and the BBB rates them an “F”.  If I don’t receive a full refund and refunds of my overdraft fees, I think this situation finally calls for an actual criminal charge.  They are knowingly overcharging & fraudulently charging customers before they even receive their trial offers.  No company who believes in their product would need to charge their customers numerous times before they even get the damned coffee ONCE.  Clearly, the product must royally suck.

All I’m saying is…I had BETTER get my REFUND or every single time someone does a search for one of their company names, there’s going to be a website or a number of blogs telling them EXACTLY how this “company” does “business”.  It’s clear they’re out to steal as much money as they can until someone finally shuts them down.  That time is LONG overdue.