Beware the experts…..

A week or so ago my TV signal went away.  NBN appeared to be working and when I phoned Optus, they knew of nothing in my area to cause this, so I went online.  Computer still worked (hooray) so off I went with Mr Google (startpage actually).

But here is where things went downhill…….   I clicked on something that seemed genuine – and up popped a group that said I could contact an expert for $1.   Well OK, so I used a card that has a few $$ on it for small payments only, and went into chat with the expert.  They got me to do a few things (most of which I had already tried anyway) and while we were checking things, my TV started working again.  I dismissed the expert and went about my day.

Soon after, my bank sms’ed to say they had stopped payment on the transaction “due to the high volume of customer disputes with this merchant”.  And sure enough, the payment was in abeyance.   I then went looking and found that 25% of customers were moaning about the fact that, even though the group said it would only cost $1, they went on to say there was a monthly fee of $25 until cancelled.

Now THAT sounds quite serious.   I certainly don’t want to pay for an expert to be “on tap” for a month.  I don’t have that many things go wrong.  And MANY of the negative reviews talked of several months of payments being taken before they became aware.  Certainly, I took the $1 bait, but the $24 was (I thought) not an issue as my bank had stopped payment.  But yesterday, it cleared, and the $24 more has become $49 suddenly.   Have they charged me ANOTHER month as we are now in November?????  I didn’t get much chop for October then, did I?

So I am now in talks via email with the said company to get my $$ back, thank you so much !!

Watch out for any group that offers a “Get answers for $1” as there is likely to be additional baggage that comes with that $1.

Benny

This group was Ex p ert Squad.  There may well be others !!!!