Friday, May 21, 2010

My complaint once again involves an online marketing scheme where you have a limited free trial and if you do not follow the requirements of calling or emailing and cancelling within 10 days of the mailing date, you are charged the full price for the ecigarette and the monthly refills; which does not give you very much time to test the product.

The company is knightstick cigarette and this is the transaction for the first charge. I assume that is the day that I ordered it as well:

4/05/2010 VITA-KNIGHTSTICKS 213-5504458 CA PRICE 29.90
Contact Information for www.securetrialoffers.com
Warehouse Return Address:
Returns Department MS#760
317 W. Quail Trax Place
Murray UT, 84107
Company Address (Please do NOT send products or packages to this address):
www.securetrialoffers.com
3960 Howard Hughes Parkway, Suite 500
Las Vegas, NV 89169
Telephone: 1-866-830-2464, 8am-6pm CST
[email protected]
Reference Number 8545491FFS66G7KBJ
Merchant CategoryMerchandise-MISCELLANEOUS / SPECIALTY RETAIL STORES
Transaction Type Sale

On the day that I ordered the product, I immediately went to the merchant’s website and used their phone number to cancel the order. I called three times in the space of an hour and each time the line was busy.
I then used their email form on the same page as the phone number. This was on or about April 8th or 9th and forgot about the order. I did not receive a confirmation email for my cancellation.
I noticed two extra charges from Knightstick cigarettes on my credit card at around April 20th:
4/18/2010 VITA-KNIGHTSTICKS 213-5504458 CA $99.90 Posting Date 04/18/2010 Reference Number 8545491FXS66HLKWW Merchant CategoryMerchandise-MISCELLANEOUS / SPECIALTY RETAIL STORES Transaction Type Sale

And another charge:

04/22/2010 VITA-KNIGHTSTICKS 213-5504458 CA $59.85 Posting Date 04/22/2010 Reference Number 8545491G0S66J0GSW Merchant CategoryMerchandise-MISCELLANEOUS / SPECIALTY RETAIL STORES Transaction TypeSale

I did not know at the time what these charges were for and I called my credit card company and explained that I had sent in an email cancelling the order within the 10 day trial period, but did not have any confirmation as their email text box does not allow you to send a copy to your own email.

They suggested that I use the phone number on the transaction charge and the number was a dead phone number. I contacted the merchant about the charges by the email address on the transaction details (I could have a copy for myself) to find out what the reasons for the charges, as I had tried calling the only two numbers and emailed to them without success.

I also emailed them again; making a copy for myself and received confirmation of my cancellation on April 28th, the date which was 3 or 4 weeks past the 10 free trial deadline date.

I continued to email asking them to verify my email cancellation within the time period and asking to have someone call me so that we could straighten out the mistake.

I was finally contacted by a gentleman who was sarcastic, contentious and implied that I was lying about the email stating that no other customer complained about not being able to get through to them by using their phone number of email and if I had emailed a cancellation request they would have received it, but they had no record of receiving an earlier cancellation email request. Finally, he stated that there was nothing that could be done and because I had disputed the charges that I was no longer in good standing with the company and for me not to contact them again.

I continued to persist in sending emails and receiving an email letter from a Supervisor in Customer Service: Cathleen Tedford, Customer relations manager, (877)889-6264, Customer Service
[email protected], Knight Sticks

She insisted that I had no other cancellation requests and that they did not charge me twice refills in April, even though they sent me two emails of auto complete charges on two different dates in April on my credit card.

I wrote two emails and called the Supervisor and she finally told me not to contact them as they were responding to my dispute and they could no longer communicate with me.

Before creating this letter, I re-read the terms and conditions and noted this time that there wording of the terms were deliberately written to mislead you into thinking that after the free trial charges for shipping that there would not be any further charges if cancelled within the free trial period, but added the $99.99 cost in the sentence just above the sentence claiming you would not have to pay anything further.

In addition, I have checked on the costs for refills and the electric cigarettes and while not testing them, the costs were about 10% of what Knightstick was charging which I believe is usury.

They have disputed the two charges for a total of about $159.00 and I am compelled to pay them as I had no way to confirm the emails sent on their website.

This seems to become a practice for companies such as this who are a marketing company and only chooses certain products online to market using similar tactics of confusing terms and conditions and ignoring any cancellation requests within the free trial period is they can plausibly deny it; such as using their email contact information on a web page on their web site. The company doing the charges on my credit card is not the same as the Knightstick cigarette, but is called securetrialoffers.com.

It is interesting to note that there are 33 complaints about knightsticks on your complaints board and this product has not been out for very long. Many of them complain of bullying tactics, ignoring cancellations orders and many complaints about billing.

http://www.complaintsboard.com/?search=knightsticks&everything=Everything

I will be sharing this letter in my Google documents for all to see if they search for knightstick on the internet. Also with www.complaints.com and any other consumer complaint blogs I can locate.

Sincerely,

Michael Surles