hotbooksale.com SmartSavingsCenter, DiscountBookSale Over $400 for a $25 book Boca Raton, Florida

My wife purchased a $25 book in 2009. She was asked if she would want to join their membership club to get free shipping. She was not told there was a monthly charge for membership. She said she would join to get free shipping. She did not get free shipping. What she did get was a $19.95 charge to her American Express card each month. We did n't discover it until we were going through our statements to get a list of deductions for our 2010 income tax. We discovered we had been charged over $400 in membership fees, without having been notified we were incurring such charges. (Admittedly, we should have been checking our statements more closely, but we didn't.) My wife called the company, was treated rudely, finally accepted a cancellation after a long runaround, but refused to refund any part of the charges. We were charged twice in December, 2010, which they denied and said it was an American Express problem. We called them, and they told us they would contest two months of charges and put a flag on the merchant. They assured us they would get the money back. It is a real scam.