Sarah
Lake Worth,#2UPDATE Employee
Wed, May 28, 2008
We appreciate Roberta's provision of clear and excellent information, enabling us to locate her iFriends account. She called our Customer Care department on May 27, and spoke to a representative. All charges were refunded at that time, but we sincerely apologize if Roberta was not completely satisfied with the way that her telephone call was handled. If Roberta has any questions or comments, we invite her to contact our Customer Care department and ask to speak to a supervisor. The number to call is 1-800-243-9726 this is a toll-free call. We provide a contact telephone number next to each charge that we send to a credit card so that customers may contact us immediately with any questions or concerns that they may have. In her complaint, Roberta discusses the fact that she received several charges of different amounts. We hope to address that issue satisfactorily below; but if Roberta still has questions, we encourage her to contact us directly. The iFriends account was created by someone who had complete knowledge of Roberta's personal information, including her credit card number, card verification code, billing address, and personal email address. Since Roberta states that she did not create the account, we strongly suggest that she take the precaution of cancelling the credit card if she is unable to determine who did create the account. Additionally, she may wish to take other steps to protect her identity and personal information. We have already blocked all of the personal information provided so that it can never again be used to create an account on any of our services. The $1 that Roberta mentions is a credit card authentication fee which is billed to every customer who creates an account. This fee must be processed in order to comply with the federal Child Online Protection Act. It is prominently disclosed in advance, and the person creating the account affirmatively acknowledged and accepted the charge. The $1 charge is effectively refunded by being automatically applied towards any purchase of premium services on the iFriends service. The person who created the account also chose to create a VIP membership, which carries a charge of $6.95 per month. Since this VIP membership is a premium service, the $1 credit card authentication fee was applied towards the first month's charge, resulting in a charge of $5.95. As Roberta notes, the regular VIP membership charge of $6.95 was billed the next month. As stated above, all charges have been refunded (a total of $13.90) and these refunds should be processed by Roberta's financial institution within the next 7-10 business days. Again, we welcome any questions or concerns that she may have. Our company has an exemplary 11-year-record with all of the leading consumer protection agencies, and we are "best in class" in our industry in the development of model online consumer best practices. Every one of our web services is verified by TRUSTe to be on its sealholder list of "the most trustworthy online businesses."