[asterisk-biz] VoicePulse engaged in very dubious business practices

[Bill Michaelson]

A vendor does not have a right to charge any customer's credit card 
unless explicitly authorized to charge that particular card for that 
particular purpose by the cardholder.  The question of whether the money 
was owed is separate.

Ron Arts wrote:
> Well,
>
> I am not a VOIP provider, but I still cannot see why VoicePulse was 
> being unreasonable.
> In my view if you don't read the newspaper you still have to pay for 
> the subscription
> so the argument that you didn't actually use your DID for 6 months 
> does not hold any ground.
>
> And that they charged one of your other cards seems logical to me. It 
> is *you*
> who owe them the money, not that old credit card. They are certainly 
> entitled to
> use one of your other cards you gave them.
>
> I'm not sure about the auto-renew though, but I wouldn't risk anything 
> and send
> a written confirmation of the cancellation in any case.
>
> Ron
>
> David Pollak schreef:
>> Folks,
>>
>> I've been using various VoIP services for over 2 years.  I've used 
>> just about every one.
>>
>> I had been using VoicePulse Connect which worked fine with IAX.  I 
>> switched over to using SIP for various reasons.  VoicePulse's support 
>> for SIP was very, very weak.  On a daily basis, I had to call 
>> VoicePulse's technical support to get them to reboot the SIP server 
>> so that my Asterisk instance would stay registered with VP's servers.
>>
>> Ultimately, I gave up on using VoicePulse.  I turned off auto-renew.  
>> I deleted all the DIDs (or so I thought) that I had with VoicePulse.
>>
>> Yesterday, I got my credit card statement and VoicePulse charged me 
>> $41.03.  I called and asked why they charged me.  "Your account 
>> dropped below the minimum amount, so we charged your card."  "But I 
>> disabled auto-renew."  "It doesn't matter, our terms of service allow 
>> us to charge your card."  (this is a new feature of the new terms of 
>> service and not the terms of service that I agreed to when I 
>> originally signed up with VoicePulse.)  This went on for about 30 
>> minutes.  At a certain point, I started asking for a supervisor.  
>> After spending (I kid you not) 5 minutes screaming "Are you f**king 
>> deaf, connect me with your supervisor," the rep finally connected me 
>> with a supervisor.
>>
>> Turns out that I hadn't canceled one of the DIDs on one of my 
>> VoicePulse accounts.  Even though I hadn't accessed VoicePulse in 
>> more than 6 months (for termination or origination) and despite that 
>> I had turned off auto-renew, VoicePulse charged my account.  Here's 
>> the rub.  The credit card associated with the account that had the 
>> DID is an old card and the number is no longer valid, so VoicePulse 
>> looked at my other accounts until they found a card that was valid 
>> and charged that card.
>>
>> After a 15 minute discussion with the supervisor, I made the point 
>> clear that either VoicePulse could refund my money or I'd dispute the 
>> charge (disputes cost merchants a lot of money.)  Finally, the 
>> supervisor refunded $41.
>>
>> I would strongly recommend against giving VoicePulse your credit card 
>> number.  They charge credit cards without authorization.
>>
>> Thanks,
>>
>> David
>>
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