Giganews Huge ripoff: customer support flat out refuses to cancel recurring billing Internet

I signed up for Giganews' "free trial" in January 2008. It was a perfectly good service, but after a week I found that I just wasn't using it. I sent customer support a request, at the address that was on the "welcome" email they sent me, and thought I was done.

In April of 2008 I discovered that they had been billing my credit card $29.95/month since January. I sent customer support another email asking to cancel and that they refund the charges since my first request. Customer support replied that they could not cancel me (!) and that I would have to use the online cancellation form. I logged in and did that.

In June of 2008, I saw that they had billed me in both May and June, and I wrote to customer support again to demand cancellation and a refund. Once again, Giganews' actual customer support claimed that they didn't have the authority to cancel my account and that the only way to cancel was online. By this time I no longer had access to the email I had signed up with, and did not have the username and password to log in online.

I wrote to their customer support yet again, and they once again claimed that they could not do anything for me, and suggested that I cancel my credit card. I have a *huge* amount of business expense processed through that card and just can't cancel it.

In August of 2008, Giganews started printing a phone number on their credit card charge line, probably in response to VISA/Mastercard requirements. Since then I have called that number several times and sat on hold for more than an hour. I have written Giganews twice more, once receiving no response at all and once receiving a very rude response that basically said they had no obligation to cancel the billing, ever.

The $30/month is not the end of the world, and it would cost more than that to cancel that credit card. Now that the total charges after my initial request to cancel total over $500, I'll be filing a small claims action against Giganews. I'll also be filing an FTC complaint, something I should have done a year ago.

Bottom line: do not ever give a credit card to Giganews. They are a huge scam and presumably rely on consumers being lazy and not fighting to cancel. They've scammed me out of over $500, and there are probably lots more people in the same boat. They will *never* cancel you, and even if you invest the time to find their online cancellation tool (not easy to do!), it doesn't actually do anything.

Anonymous
Seattle, Washington
U.S.A.