1 & 1 Internet, mail.com Takes your money and makes you feel guilty about it (man why can't we do this? oh yeah it's illegal!) Internet

 Dear fellow citizens,

I write this merely to amuse the rest of you viligant folks and hope it serves as a warning to those smarter than I. Also I write this, though I be of average intelligence to confirm the validity of the ripoff reports about mail.com that precede this one. The folks that reported earlier I believe are representative of many consumers that dealt with this company through little (or no fault of their own).

This mail.com fraud was not of a get-rich-quick scam, nor was it of one where the consumer was fairly 'finagled' into a legal beagle predative financial relationship (e.g. ultility bills that hike 'as it wills them' nor was it a case of consumer 'didn't read the fine print' and is complaining about what they contractually agreed to pay beforehand but was shown in deceptive math (e.g. only 15 payments of $35 interest free but $300 penalty if you missed a payment crap)

I have been a customer of mail.com for 9 years. (since 2004). Before that I had a free email service that got bought out by mail.com. At the beginning service wasn't great but it wasn't awful. Plus I had a serious misjudgement call in 2005 (I didn't think this newfangled "gmail" would be able to survive giving 100X what the competition was. So I paid this mail.com $20 a year for decent mail service (not great mind you) but decent and as I had a steady job what was $20?

I tried to cancel once in 2010 but I didn't get a response. I chaulked it up to perhaps I had wrote the wrong email address.

(In hindsight I should have seen they were just ignoring me but I was being a bloody fool)

In 2011, with no job and now extremely bad email service with my mailbox constantly full of spam and realizing that gmail was indeed still awesome and here to stay, I tried to forcefully cancel my premium account. I contacted mail.com support team and told them I was canceling their service multiple times. They charged me and told me that becuase I did not tell them 30 days before my subscription was to be renewed, I now owed them $9.95 before i could cancel.

I paid them and like an idiot did not keep a record of them saying so.

So in 2012 they charged me again and this time, I got them to 'imply" by paying the blasted $9.95  they would acknowledge that I had terminated my service. Fool that I was, I actually had overcame significant trouble with their server to actually pay them.

(perhaps visa had temporarily suspended payments to them pending an investigation? who knows? This part in () is pure hopeful speculation of course)

So problem solved right? Guy (me) makes stupid mistake paying for bloody email service that was decent for possibly 2-3 years tops.

Noooo.

This year 2013 to my complete and utter delight I was once again charged (you guess it!) $9.95 for 'premium' email service. Which was supposed to have been canceled at least twice. But hey since I paid three times before, because as a stupid aspiring Kindergarten-teacher-I-actually-trust-what-people-say, the mail.com support team actually decided to reply to me.

I'll spare you the entire exchange but roughly it went like this.

Oh really? I wished to cancel my premium service? such a shame...but sir we have no records of that.

So then I forwarded them evidence of my cancellation and paying my 'termination' fee as described below.

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Part of correspondence with mail.com

Dear  *******,

Thank you for contacting us. 

In relation to your concern, please be informed that we already have taken the payment. Thank you for using mail.com. 

If you have any further questions, please do not hesitate to contact us. 

Regards, 

Jeremy Sagpang 
Your mail.com Support Team 


> Eric wrote: 
> 
> Dear mail.com, 
> 
> In response to your statement about nonpayment. I have tried MULTIPLE times to pay you that $9.95 I have owed since last year. Each time I have tried to change my credit card, I get the message %27internal service error%27 try again later whether I use firefox, chrome or IE. Just now I tried again another twelve times. the last time it said credit card successfully changed. 
> 
>  If the credit card has not been changed to the one ending in ***** that you give me a phone number for me to call which I can give my number over the phone TOLL and surcharge FREE or a mailing address to which I can send a check and whom to pay the check to.  I also only wish to pay only the amount owed and taking that sum means your company agrees henceforth I have a free (nonpremium) account. 
> respectfully, 
> Eric 
> 
> Additional information: 
> 

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Guess what happened? SURPRISE! They stopped answering my emails. Apparently they will tell you anything as long as you pay them. Even paying them twice for the privilege of canceling is not appreciated. They are not willing to let go of any money for any reason.

I then contacted my credit card company that mail.com was being fradulent.

Apparently however to the credit card company it does not constitute fraud, becuase I had agreed to the charge a couple years ago even though I had contacted the merchant and they now repeatedly refused to deal in good faith.

After telling the credit card company that this sounded remarkably like rape (just becuase I said yes once in the past, doesn't mean someone else can say yes for me, every time in the future), they recultantly rescinded the $9.95 but told me, it's your problem...if they charge you again, you will have to pay them...which of course they will!

So in conclusion, I hope this amuses you. Also avoid mail.com if you like to save your hard earned money. If you really really would like to waste money

(with no reasonable expectation of any return whatsoever, I'd ask you to consider donating supplies to my new bare walled third grade classroom. Hey at least if the kids don't learn, I'm at least honest about what my limitations are :P ).

**Note I'm not seriously asking for donations to my classroom. As bad as my salary is and as bad as my pension is going to be (whatever it turns out to be) I thankfully now at least have a job unlike many good citizens far better than myself. If you have money, donate money to rural schools, those people really don't have any money (in any country!) and vote for politicans that will provide for the working poor and the disadvantaged.