Refund Of Unauthorised Payment

[ELLY]

What is the name of your state? Queensland Australia
I am seeking legal advice and opinion on the following: Briefly ..
I cancelled a subscription to Lavalife on 16 March 2008 and received the following email (16 March 1.12pm) confirming that the Lavalife account had been deleted......
"This email is to confirm that your Lavalife account has been deleted. We hope you enjoyed your experience with Lavalife. If you removed your profile because you've found someone special on our website, why not tell us about it by writing to [email protected]
If you deleted your account because you were unhappy with the service you received from Lavalife, please tell us how we can better serve our customers in the future by writing to [email protected]
If you'd like to reactivate your account, please contact [email protected] from your registered email address within 14 days of the account being deleted
For any assistance, please contact [email protected]. No reply is necessary".....
On 18 March 2008 $34.95 was debited from my credit card.
I have contacted Lavalife on at least 6 occasions for a refund of this debit and received either no reply or an unsatisfactory response. The latest email (5/9/08) states" Although you had requested to have your account deleted after you had submitted the purchase you will still be charged for the package which you have purchased.
Canceling your account after the purchase that was made does not automatically reverse the purchase in question".
Could I please have confirmation whether I have a valid right to have my payment refunded or should I just abandon the recovery of my money...thanks Elly Hill in Australia.

 

[TheGeekess]

Though this site is for U.S. LAW ONLY, I'd be calling the bank that the debit card is held with and tell them that Lavalife cannot debit from the account, that you are withdrawing any authorization. They should be able to block it from happening again. And you can ask the bank about recovering any monies.

 

[ELLY]

Lavalife reply

Thank you kindly for your response and advice...ps..the reason I placed the message on this forum is that Lavalife is a registered US company...regards Elly in Oz

 

[cvdesign]

Though this site is for U.S. LAW ONLY, I'd be calling the bank that the debit card is held with and tell them that Lavalife cannot debit from the account, that you are withdrawing any authorization. They should be able to block it from happening again. And you can ask the bank about recovering any monies.

But bear in mind that in the "fine print" of most memberships (and since I'm assuming this is a dating site, the product is usually a membership), they often state that canceling an account does not necessarily mean a payment is refundable -- the membership will simply not renew for the next membership term.

I belong to several eLancing and professional sites that use those same terms. If I paid for my membership from 5/1 - 6/1 and cancel 5/6, I've paid for the month and it's theirs, as per the service agreement. I seem to remember that TypePad also uses the same agreement terms. You pay for the month (or quarterly, annually, etc) and you've agreed to forfeit your claims to a refund, so to speak.

________________________________________________

Should also have mentioned that many "membership" based sites' agreement also stipulate that if you cause a payment to not process (stop payment or dispute debit/credit payment) they will access a fee a'la "non-sufficient funds." Most don't, though, AFAIK (I really have no idea if that's an empty threat -- if they CAN do that) ... they usually just cancel your account and freeze your service.

But it's still worth thinking about.

 

[ELLY]

Refund of Unauthorised Payment

Thank you one and all for your advice...I'm going to try and will write a letter of complaint to my bank (who issued the Visa debit card) and see what happens..although I'm not holding my breath waiting for a favourable result...but I guess another one of life's pitfalls and lessons well learnt...regards Elly in Oz...