Complaint Review: thesmartshoppersavings

As I said, I received a telephone call from an associate with this company on June 4, 2012 promising great savings on everything from groceries to restaurants, traveling, movies, rental cars, plus many, many more. I was told that there would be a 7 day free trial period and that the entire program cost would be $3.95 per week. I was told that I would receive a $120.00 gift certificate to Target just for trying this program. I was also told that I would receive the gift certificate within 3 business days. It was explained in detail to me that I would be billed 5 at a time. I asked many questions and was very skeptical about the program as most of these cold calls are fraudulent. After listening to the caller for quite some time and asking many questions, I was asked immediately for the card number I would be putting this on. I told the caller that I would not be joining but thank you for the call. Of course he began making the deal sound too good to turn down. Finally, after agreeing to TRY the program for 7 days at no cost and receive my free Target gift voucher, I was turned over to a Supervisor to confirm my information. The supervisor decided immediately to lower my weekly price to $2.97 out of the goodness of her heart. I asked many questions and wrote everything down. She told me that I would not be charged anything until July 4, 2012, and that amount would be $64.35 for 5 months of service. I insisted that she repeat this amount and the dates several times as I was told in the beginning that the call was being recorded. 

So after careful consideration, I decided to give this program a try. I gave my debit card number to the supervisor with the assurance that I would NOT be charged ANYTHING until July 4, 2012. I was then told that I would be receiving an email from them with my log-in information and my password.  I continued to check my email throughout the remainder of the day until around midnight looking for my email from them, but never received it (as of this point, I still have not received it).  This morning, June 5, 2012, my husband woke me before leaving for work to inform me that there were two pending charges in our bank account from this company. One was for $3.95 and the other for $64.35. He asked me to find out the reason for this. So this morning I checked with our bank and was told that the pending charges should drop off our account within 3 days.  I was semi-satisfied with this answer but felt the need to call Thesmartshoppersavings program for reassurance. This is when everything began to fall apart. The representative that answered the phone began explaining to me that the charges were correct. The $3.95 was the start-up cost and would remain. Then she said that the $64.35 was a monthly charge and that too would remain and be taken out of our account. She explained that the amount of $64.35 would be taken out of our account each month for 12 months. I explained to her that this was TOTALLY different than what I was told the day before by the representative and the supervisor. She continued to tell me that she was sorry that I had misunderstood what I had been told the day before but insisted that these amounts were the true amounts. I tried to explain my position to her repeatedly, telling her that they needed to check the recorded call from the day before. However, this got me absolutely nowhere and she just continued to repeat what she originally told me. Finally I insisted on speaking to a supervisor. The supervisor, Tina Garcia, got on the line and told me that I had obviously misunderstood what I had been told the day before. I insisted that they listen to the recording, however she refused to follow my request. Once again she offered to lower the price by a minuscule amount and insisted that the correct charge was $64.35 per month and would be charged as so. At this point, I told her I wanted to completely cancel my account.  Then she told me she was very sorry that I would be canceling but that the pending charges would remain and I would be charged a cancellation charge of $118.00. At this point my blood was boiling and I was very angry. I told her that I was going to file a fraud report with my bank and have the amounts removed and make sure that they were NEVER able to charge to my account again. I also told her I was going to report their company to every avenue at my disposal. Once she realized that I was completely serious and not easily taken advantage of, she agreed to cancel the account, remove the pending amounts, and not charge any further amounts to my account. After hanging up with her, I immediately called my bank and reported the charges as fraud. I also had my Debit Card frozen so that no more charges could be made to it by them.

Unfortunately, I now have to wait a week to receive a new card, which is an inconvenience to me, but I do not trust this company AT ALL! I should have known better than to trust someone who calls my home (repeatedly before I finally got tired of it and answered), promising something too good to be true. Unfortunately I did and I'm quite sure many other people have fallen prey to this despicable, lying company. They should be put out of business and I am very disappointed to see that respectful companies actually do business with them. I hope my complaint will keep at least one person from becoming one of their victims.