Health smile
Unauthorised Payments from Bank a/c

I ordered a teeth-whitening trial from a company called Healthsmile, which should only have cost me £3.00 for postage and packaging, only to realise days later that I had been charged three times that amount.

My bank initially said all they could do was dispute the amount, once the company requested the payment. However, days later another transaction appeared on my statement, for a company called Herbalgen.com, which I had never heard of. They too had taken money for postage, yet I've received no product.

My bank was able to confirm that Herbalgen and Healthsmile are one and the same. So they have, in fact, charged me twice for shipping nothing. From accounts that I have since read on the web, this is their MO; my account details will now be passed from fake company to fake company and I can expect a feeding frenzy to take place with my hard-earned cash.

My bank advised me to cancel the card I originally used and they issued a new one. They assured me that any requests for payments arriving with the old card details will be declined. They also requested that I send them the Terms & Conditions of the offer, to help them dispute the payment. Apparently, I am one of dozens of cases that have been reported to them in recent weeks.

When I called the bank, I was spitting fire over the disparity between what I expected to pay for shipping and the amount that was actually taken. Unfortunately, I didn't call early enough. During our discussion, I was informed that at 1.06am that morning, Healthsmile had taken their first full payment of £54 for the repeat order of the product they never sent me in the first place. This will also be disputed, but I have no idea how successful the bank will be in reclaiming the money. All seems to rest on what I did or did not read and agree to in the Terms and Conditions. From my perspective, the T&Cs are void if the product I was meant to trial never arrived.

My initial instinct, when I uncovered all of this, was to close my account altogether in order to alleviate the vulnerability I felt. However, I have instead taken the advice and assurances I was given by the bank and hopefully a dispute from them will be enough to stop any further requests for payment.

I have so far lost approximately £70.00. If the bank are able to reclaim this I will be jubilant. If not, I will be poorer, wiser and infinitely more cautious about internet shopping than I was before this ordeal began.

Company: Health smile
Country: United Kingdom
Region: England
City: London

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