Complaint Review: Wealthy Affiliate

I signed up for Wealthy Affiliate to learn how to market my company's products over the Internet.  Since Wealthy Affiliate is oriented towards affiliate marketing, something I'm not doing, I realized -- too late -- that I'd wasted my money.  When I was contacted by them later, I explained that I wasn't getting any value, and that I wasn't interested in renewing.

They don't offer refunds, including for unused time (first red flag), and the only available option now is "Cancel".  I don't recall the existing verbiage being there at the time I informed them I didn't want to renew, and I've since read on Ripoff Reports that Wealthy Affiliates has changed their policy and web site in the past 12 months or so.  But, I'd sent them an e-mail stating that I didn't want my account renewed and there was no reply to indicate that I needed to do something else, or even an acknowledgment that my account wouldn't auto-renew (third red flag).

After spending time learning why this type of affiliate marketing approach wasn't going to work for me (I did learn valuable lessons that have helped me gain share against my competitors, and that was directly related to why WA wasn't going to help me, so it wasn't a complete loss), I marked it up to "School of hard knocks".

As with other people who've been ripped off by Wealthy Affiliate, I didn't receive any notification of a pending renewal date -- they'd been told I didn't want to renew, so I wasn't expecting one.

Yesterday (4/24) I received a call from my credit card's fraud department asking if I'd authorized a charge in the amount of approximately $360.  I told them that I'd not, and that they needed to deny the charge.

I have sent "private messages" to both Kyle and Carson and have not yet received a response.