Seniors Home Exchange Rogers.Com their web site and service disappeared after taking my money Sutton West, Ontario

On Oct 23, 2009, I paid SeniorsHomeExchange.Com their requested fee for a three year membership and access to their online system of contacting travelers for the purpose of arranging mutually convenient home exchanges. They sent me an email acknowledgment. A few weeks later their primary web site - and all their other known web sites - went offline. They simply disappeared.

Because I build and host web sites, I know how to find the owners of web sites even when the sites are down. I emailed them asking if they would be back online soon. No response. I repeated it a week later. Still no response. A month to the day after they accepted my money I wrote again. Still no response - and of course, the sites were all dead.

That last email was returned because their email address was no longer working. Knowing what I know about how the Internet works, it told me that the company hosting them had shut them off, and that usually is for lack of payment after sufficient delay and notice.

On Dec 17th, while I was away on vacation (having used a different hopme exchange service) they wrote and said their web site is online. No explanation was given other than "technical issues."  They also tried to b.s. me (again remember I have been hosting web sites for more that 16 years) claiming it had some vague issue with not putting the www in the URL That's b.s. because the site was offline as established by the bounced email.

When I returned home on Dec 16th I wrote to them and asked for a refund. Their response admitted they had been down. Still no explanation and my refund request was ignored. I wrote back immediately again demanding a refund. No response.

On January 22 I wrote and said I wanted a refund that same day or I would take action. I got back an immediate response that promised a full refund, saying that my request was approved and had been passed it to their accounting depart and it would come "soon."

On Feb 09, I wrote again asking for a prompt refund. No response.

On Feb 16, two days ago, I wrote again and gave them until today at 6pm my time, for the charge against my debit card to be reversed and the funds put back or I would go public. No response.

Caveat Emptor. These people are crooks.And inept as well. They can't even keep their own web site online because of failure to pay their own bills.