We've Been Robbed

What ever happened to the days where you had to actually authorize for money to be taken out of your bank account? Twice in the past two months we’ve had money taken from our bank account without our knowledge or authorization and when we complained all we got were excuses. Granted the amount was less than $5 on each occurrence but it was a violation and in my opinion taking something without asking is the same as stealing.

The first time this happened was with a company called All American Direct. It’s the company we had to go through to get NBC on our satellite. According to Dish Network there’s no local affiliate for NBC in our area so they can’t provide it and we were referred to All American Direct where we could get the station for a small monthly fee. When I called All American Direct I was told we couldn’t get NBC through them because we could get it with rabbit ears BUT they could request a waver if we paid a $3 non refundable fee. I was instructed to check with them in two weeks to see if the waver was approved and if they didn’t get an answer within 30 days we’d be automatically approved. Less than a week later Don noticed they took an additional $3 and change from our account. We called the company and were told we were approved to receive NBC and they do an automatic monthly payment. We argued that we only authorized a one time fee to be deducted from our account and was not informed of the auto pay policy and did not authorize any additional payments. Since there was no other way we could get NBC we had no choice but to do business with this company.

The second time additional funds were taken from our account was the result of an online order through Dirt Devil. We purchased a Dirt Devil Kwik handheld vacuum as a Christmas gift. We were given the transaction total before we confirmed our order then an invoice was emailed to us for the same amount. A few days later we noticed an additional $1-$2 was deducted from our account. A call to Dirt Devil and we were told they’d made a mistake on the sales tax. Again we argued that we only authorized payment of a certain amount and should have been contacted before additional funds were removed from our account. Needless to say we are never doing business with Dirt Devil again and will not purchase any Dirt Devil products whether it’s directly through their company or a retail store.

In both of these instances we would have authorized the additional funds and there would be no problem but to assume that we’d be OK with it is wrong and another example of Customer Disservice. And people wonder why I have a problem with big business and customer service in general.