usenet.nl - scam help!

[sarahrachel123]

HELP!

In december when trying to get last minute help on my dissertation I came across usenet.nl and believed it to be a site that I could use for research. Within the hour of signing up for the 14 free day trial I was stuck on it, couldn't find a cancellation and knew it wasn't going to be of any help to me. So I cancelled via paypal my accounts with them and got that confirmation. I never used their site.

I am a university student and they must have got my home address from paypal, so I was receiving letters I was unaware of. Only in March did I receive an email with a bill of £134. 

I rang them and no answer. I tried again for hours and finally got through. I was appauled by their services and they hung up on me and called my vulgar things. I demanded an explanation over email and more details. 

I then got on google, as I should have before and found out many people have had the same issue. I then over email confirmed this as cancellation of my 'contract with them'.

Now, two months later I get another email saying I have until the end of this month (two weeks!) to pay or there will be more of a charge.

Please help - what can I do in this situation?

I cancelled my payment with them within the hour I joined, I did not hear anything for three months and then they announce this bill on me. I do not agree I should pay but I don't know what action I can take. Should I get advise from a lawyer and reply with details of that?

I just want them to go away! I can't afford any of these fines. Please help a struggling student out here. I have read online people saying not to pay but I was wondering if someone can give me an update a year or so down the line?

Thanks. 

[kernowlass]

@sarahrachel123

Cancelling on paypal just means that you stopped paying it does not mean you ended the contract as you have to do that with the seller.

For eg if you sign up to something for 12 months paying via a credit card and then you cancel your card, all that does is stop the payment it does not stop the fact you need to cancel the subscription with the seller.

So as you have cancelled the payment then paypal has nothing more to do with this problem.

You may be liable to any payments not deducted BEFORE you actually contacted the seller and cancelled but i am no lawyer and so your best bet would be to speak to citizens advice as they are the experts on consumer law.

Good luck.

[sarahrachel123]

Thanks for your reply.

I do see your point, but it is the way they have gone about it that makes me feel scammed. They never emailed me or tried to contact me when there had been no payment gone through. For months I had no response or contact so I had forgotten about the 10 minutes I joined the service! But all of a sudden I get a bill of 134 EUROS. it's ridiculous. the way they have dealt with this makes me know they are scam artists. But legally caught people out perhaps.

But thanks for your help, I'm waiting to speak to paypal on the phone and planning on getting some advise from a lawyer.. 

It just seems so unjust and makes me so anxious. 

[kernowlass]

@sarahrachel123

As i said paypal can't do anything for you as they cancelled the payment when you asked them and that is all they are required to do.

And i did suggest citizens advice rather than a lawyer, apart from the fact they are FREE, they are also far more up to date on consumer matters than some lawyers, but your call and good luck.

[slbuck1942]

Once you have cancelled the auto payment, you're done with them.  They are a scam.  They are not going to try to collect.  Tag them as spam and forget about them.

[jamesdouglas55]

I have a similar problem with them, I started the trial period, could not find the data I was looking for and I submitted the cancellation form on their site. I received no conformation of cancellation but I figured they need time to process and I forgot about it ,considering the issue closed.

Today I received a mail that they billed my credit card via PayPal. 
I never used any of the data traffic proving that I truly did not want their service.

In the messages on their site I found a message informing me that the trial will expire and that I will be billed.

But I did not receive this message on my gmail although I received all the others. If I had gotten that e-mail I would have again tried to cancel the subscription and all would be well. But of course I didn't so they can bill me and claim innocence.

You can see what I am talking about in the attachment .

I submitted my request for a refund via their usenet site and PayPal and I got a response to my e-mail, in short, they don't care that I didn't use the traffic there will be no refund. Furthermore they say that I sent a mail to their noreply e-mail which I did not do.... 🙂 I'm not such a n00b

I don't know what to do now, should I escalate this via PayPal?

Here is a transcript of their reply....

Hello My real name,

thank you very much for your inquiry on 27.02.2018!

The cancellation process had always worked. We do not know what went wrong when you tried to cancel online. If you had not received a cancellation confirmation minutes after you had cancelled that means the cancellation did not go through and you could have contacted us to check for you or write us a written request to cancel for you. We have not received any cancellation request until February 27 2018. You are asking why we have not replied to your e-mail. Apparently, you have sent an e-mail to noreply. This e-mail address is a so-called "no-reply address", which means that e-mails sent to this address will not be read or replied to. An auto-response including other ways to contact us was sent to you right after you sent us your e-mail. Please understand that we cannot reply to e-mails sent to noreply.

Please note that by not using the service does not automatically cancel or close your account with usenet.nl.

We confirm we had carried out your cancellation request for account 9056992 dated February 27 2018 after your contract was already extended. Please note that your cancellation after the term was already extended does not shut down your account with immediate effect. It is only cancelling for the date at the end of the extended term and to avoid any further extension after the current term expires as confirmed in the cancellation confirmation sent to you in a separate e-mail.

We are sorry to hear that you do not want to extend your contract with usenet.nl.

You have signed up for our usenet.nl free trial package on February 12 2018 and you have neither chosen any other package nor cancelled your contract before it expired. According to the information concerning your right of revocation, which you accepted upon registration, the renewal of your contract to an annual Relax package was on February 27 2018. That was why you have been subsequently charged 99,96 EUR - single payment for the whole package. For this package, you will be allotted 35 GB download volume per month for 12 months to download in the fast Power Mode - The e-mail sent to you each month is not a new charge - it is just to inform you that your 35 GB for that month has been recharged and ready for use. It is up to you to use the package.

Unfortunately since you did not cancel in due time, we subsequently cannot reverse the renewal of your contract. There will be no refund.

Your term period will end on February 27 2019. There will be no further extensions after this date.

Thank you for your understanding.

****We are actually only your provider that gives you access to Usenet and are not responsible for the contents since we do not control or have any influence on them. We cannot comment on any copyright contents. We do not have any index of contents and cannot tell you if the files you are looking for are available since these files are contributed by individual users.

Unfortunately, it is not possible to download contents found on streaming or torrent sites directly via usenet.nl.

Websites such as torrent.to are web based and provide links to peer-to-peer (P2P) programs such as e-mule or bit torrent, whereas usenet.nl offers access to the Usenet. Therefore, the databases cannot be linked.

Our affiliates may post links leading to our homepage where you can sign up for an account in order to download from the Usenet. However, we cannot guarantee whether the same range will be at your disposal.

In general, you can use different search engines in order to browse the Usenet. You can find a selection of them in your newsreader software. But you can also use NZB search engines in order to search for content. NZB files can be seen as a reference to specific content and provide the possibility for a faster search for the respective content.

You can try one of the following NZB search engines:
- www.binsearch.info
- www.nzbindex.com

This is how it works:
Use the NZB search engine to find the multi-part file you want. The NZB search engines provide you with multiple options to filter the desired result (e.g. uploader, size of the content, date of upload), so that you can specify your search. After you found the content you were looking for, you can easily download the NZB file with only one click on the result. You can then open the NZB file using the newsreader of your choice.

Your Customer ID: 9056992

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