Businessmax/VistaBusinessmax/Vista Print Bogus $14.95 subtracted from my acct! Lexington Massachusetts

I was on the internet searching for priniting companies to make a sorority shirt for me. I came up on an offer that sounded too good to be true-- it was.

The offer stated that I would only pay for the cheap hanes t-shirt and that the printing would be free. The t-shirt was about $3 and the shipping and handling was about $6. For a total of $9 that wasn't bad for a shirt with writing on the front and back-- I thought.

I recieved the shirt about a week later and it was nice. Then a couple of days after that I saw that $14.95 was deducted from my acct... I'm a college student, so as you can imagine discovering money gone from my acct is a nightmare!

On my bank statement it said that the charge was from a company called Businessmax. I called the 800 number and talked with a very polite lady that told me Vistaprint automatically enetered me into some kind of free trial with another company- or some bull.

I really wasn't listening, I just told her that I wanted my money back. She was very cooperative and said that my money would be placed in my acct within 2 business days and my "trial" would be canceled.

I then went to the vistaprint privacy policy. In the policy it clearly states-verbatim "VistaPrint recognizes the importance of maintaining your privacy. We value your privacy and appreciate your trust in us."

And terrifyingly in a couple of paragraphs below they say, "In order to carry out certain business functions, such as order fulfillment, e-mail delivery, or marketing, we sometimes hire other companies to perform services on our behalf. We may disclose personally identifiable information that we collect about you to these companies to enable them to perform these services, but they are required to safeguard the data and are not authorized to use it for any other purpose than completing their contractual requirements to VistaPrint. For example, as a part of the normal process of completing your purchase, VistaPrint may provide your personal data to a third party payment processor, such as Bibit B.V., depending on your chosen method of payment. Please be aware that, because of the limitations of the systems used by some financial institutions, the statement you receive from your credit card or financial institution may show the name of a third party payment processor, such as Bibit B.V., instead of or in addition to the VistaPrint name. In addition, we may share the information we collect with other companies with whom we have joint marketing arrangement."

So to bring the horor consumer story to an end, I'll leave you with a bit of advice--- READ every company privacy statement that you purchase merchandise online from!!!

Iwasdooped
Iowa City, Iowa
U.S.A.