Lois & Clark Forums Forums General Discussion Off Topic BEWARE FLYCELL.COM and others like them!!!!!!!

This may be a no brainer, but don't give you cell phone number to any website promising free stuff!

FlyCell.com promises free ringtones. You just put in your cellphone number and they send you a code to get 15 ringtones for free.

BUT

What I didn't know is that they don't need a credit card to charge you for their services! They just charge your carrier!

In the very fine print at the bottom of the web page(had to be set to Ariel 3!) it explains that by giving your number you are subscribing to their service! Within 8 seconds of me signing on, they had charged my phone account 9.99, which I didn't find out about until later.

Totally naive me, I perused their ringtone selection, didn't find anything I wanted and so sent a txtmsg to them to say I wasn't interested.

Later that day, I got a joke from them. It cost me 5 cents to get the joke. Apparently, they sign you up automatically for a Joke of the Day service as well.

I sent back the txtmsg to stop the jokes, but they kept coming, each day. So I went to the website and it said to send back STOP JOKE and that would be the end of it. It was not. I dug deeper into their FAQ and followed the instructions and got a '404 page error' for the un-subscribe page! At the time I thought "This does not bode well...".

Eventually, I got an email form to fill out(no phone numbers on the site, don't you know!)and got an email telling me what to do. I sent STOP ALL. This didn't work. I was still getting jokes.

Then, last night, I got another message. I was charged 9.99 for the Joke of the Day service. I didn't know those combinations of colors was possible on the human face !

Apparently, they hadn't updated all their web pages (and if you go there now it still reads that you need to send STOP JOKE) and the actual txtmsg is STOP GRIN. Fine, I did that. I got a joke today. I felt like I was going to Hulk-out.

Did some searching and found that FlyCell.com features prominently at Ripoff report.com a very useful website that I intend to checkout more often.

I finally got a hold of my phone service provider and as soon as I mentioned the sites name, they immediately refunded the $18.98 (they couldn't refund the 5 cent charges because it is nearly impossible for them to determine which came from them. I was willing to let the 1.15 go at this point.).

I am happier now, but I thought I just had to share so that no one else gets caught by them and others like them.

James

Ouch, James. :p Lucky you were able to get most of the cash back! But few things are as frustrating as trying to deal with an online company that won't respond your emails.

I remember recently I was about to sign up for something that looked pretty nifty (can't for the life of me remember what it was now). But for some reason - because it never usually occurs to me - I Google'd their name first before I downloaded anything. And hit a ton of unfavourable reviews which made me go, 'Yikes!'.

So it's definitely something worth doing before you find yourself in trouble.

LabRat