Usenet.nl is a Scam. -

I’ve been trying to keep this quiet, because I don’t want people to know that I’ve gotten scammed, I want you guys to be comfortable with listening to my tips and feel secure. Well, the thing is, I did get scammed and I feel I need to tell my readers, so they don’t make the same mistakes.

First of all, this isn’t about a Make Money Online offer, in fact this was just some download site, so don’t be worried about my tips involving you in this scam, because there is no connection between that site, and any tip I give on this site. In fact, I am going to e-mail any site that links to them and ask for them to remove the link.

Anyways to the details, a few weeks ago, I signed up for the Trial Offer of Usenet.nl at a cost of around $3 USD, for a friend who needed to increase his referrals, during the signup process there was 0 mention of any subscription, nor was there mention of a TOS they told me about later.

I wish they would have said something, because 15 days later they slammed me with a $99 Euro Fee, which is around $125 in US Dollars. Which is, I’ll admit a bit of money.

Since, I figured hey we both made a mistake, let’s try to work this out, I contacted the company, however they actually hung up on me through the phone, and were very rude in their responses on Paypal.com in a dispute.

I decided to investigate, if I wasn’t going to get my money back, I was going to tell everyone about how this company ripped me off. My search started at RipOffReport.com, where I found this report among others, where people had been scammed by Usenet.nl.

I’ve given 7 Days to usenet.nl to refund my money, without writing this post, however they have decided to give me some rude responses and basically tell me to go away, which is why I am calling out this company based on their ethics.

I’d advice you all to stay away from this “usenet” company, don’t deal with companies without ethics.

Now, I know this post may confuse you all, but you gotta understand this site is a scam, its a site made to get those 99 Euro payment from people who don’t know how to dispute paypal transactions.

To be fair, I’m going to give Usenet.nl the chance of redemption, if you read this post, you’re welcome to leave a comment with your side of the story, it will not be edited (however vulgar/racist/obsene may be removed), and I will allow my readers to hear your side, if you issue a refund, I will post an update here, which should make your business look better.

Cheers All,

Caleb “Bozonessinc” Spilchen

Reply From Usenet.nl Via E-mail:

thank you for your message from 02.06.2010:

After giving the matter much thought and discussion, we decided to revoke your contract and grant you a full refund.

We at Usenet.nl do not try to scam customers, and customer satisfaction is a high priority. Although we do not have to revoke your contract, as we will show you, we will do so as a gesture of good will and to show you that we are not a fake company out to scam people.

We also would very much appreciate it if you released this message on your blog, because we would like to tell “our side of the story”.

In your blog, you state that “during the signup process there was 0 mention of any subscription, nor was there mention of a TOS”. Unfortunately this is simply not true. Feel free to check out the signup process on www.usenet.nl yourself:

You will see that on the second page, right after entering your personal data and before you enter any payment details and place your order, it says:

“Once the trial period has expired, your membership will be automatically renewed, so you will be able to use our service without interruption.
You are free to cancel at any time. ”

Below that and after entering your payment details, you have to agree to our terms & conditions – there is a checkbox you have to check to be able to complete the order. Terms are displayed in a text window, and 2 b) clearly states:

“Unless I cancel within the test period, or upgrade to a different subscription package, I agree to join for only $10.31 (8.33 Euro) per month – for a period of 1 year and get access to 25 Gigabytes download volume for each month. I understand that I may cancel at any time, such that my subscription is not renewed upon expiry. I acknowledge that unless I wish for my account to be automatically renewed for a further service period, I must provide notice of my wish not to renew, at least one day before the end date of the current term.”

We gladly will provide screenshots of that page if you still do not believe us.

Please understand that from our point of view, you claiming that there was “0 mention” of the automatic renewal process is libel. It casts us in a bad light and makes us look like we try to trap customers into contract renewals – which is simply not true. Fact is that you could have cancelled at any time during the trial period and just did not do so. Calling this a “scam” is not fair, since the whole process of contract renewal is described clearly and not hidden or omitted during singup. It is described even more clearly in our TOS, which you have to accept before placing your order. We hope you understand that Ethics have nothing to do with this: you, the customer, explicitly accepted our terms & conditions, and we believe it’s only fair if a company can expect customers to honor the terms & conditions, as we of course do honor them ourselves.

While we are on the subject of our TOS: those also state that “with Registration for the Service, the Customer is obligated to provide the following personal data completely and correctly: surname, first name, address and telephone number, valid e-mail address and bank account details.” You provided only fake data besides your E-Mail. This is the reason why customer care was not able to find your contract in our database when posting the comment on your blog.

We also would like to apologize for the rude tone you experienced when contacting customer care, especially during the PayPal dispute.

Nevertheless, we will grant you a full refund. Your contract is being revoked right now, and you will be informed in seperate e-mails about the cancellation and your refund.

Response From Caleb: Pending – I’m still preparing the response to this message.

Cheers