I sent this link to my brother who is an lawyer / attorney in Germany for intelectual property and competition/ antitrust law. Apparently justfab.de operates under German law. He said if another shoe retailer would be his client, there might be good chances to give them a really good kicking. I jokingly said, he should ask Zalando. But he refused and said a lawyer is not allowed to ask people to be his client. So if you run a shoe e-commerce site under German law and want to see this scam go out of business, you should NOT ask http://rechtsanwalt-metzler.de/
Why was a scam company able to raise $76 Million Series B?
181–185 of 185 posts
Re: Why was a scam company able to raise $76 Million Series B?
#182Earlier quoted context omitted.
Another little known fact about chargebacks: You lose some of your rights if you pay charges before disputing them. Try it, absolutely still try it, and good luck!
That's nonsense. The only time a chargeback makes sense is after the payment has already gone through.
Nonsense? You're a real charmer, tisme.
There's a bit of mis-information here.
First, while credit card companies and banks can chose to honor disputes of any age, your rights under the FCBA protect you for only 60 days -- and the FCBA doesn't apply to debit cards at all.
My tip -- that you should never use a debit card and with credit cards you should dispute charges before paying the bill -- is correct in spirit but not in the letter of the way I worded it, so mea culpa on technicalities but the point is correct. The FCBA only grants you 60 days to dispute a transaction (after the statement cut, not the transaction itself).
Also, CC disputes have some consequences. Companies aggregate & share lists of customers that have charge-backed. Finding yourself on the list can see you turned-away from legitimate, good businesses that have to protect themselves against dispute-prone customers.
Re: Why was a scam company able to raise $76 Million Series B?
#183Don't ask for a refund, go to your bank or CC company and charge back the 6 months. That'll hit them where it hurts. Little known fact about chargebacks: the merchant pays an administration fee, typically $20 to $50. Per charge! That is why the smarter scammers refund to everybody who complains, not refunding is plain dumb. This scam has been around for a long time, usually it's adult companies that sell you a 'free'…
However, be careful and only do a chargeback when you are sure you never want to deal with that merchant again. Many will blacklist you if you do a chargeback, because of that high chargeback fee (which they have to pay even if they have sufficient documentation to successfully fight the chargeback). I'm kind of surprised no one has started a service for merchants to warn them of chargeback prone customers (there are…
There is a service that warns merchants of fraud-likely customers. Precharge. I was surprised to not see it anywhere on HN to date.
You can learn more at http://precharge.com/guaranteed_chargeback_protection/
Essentially you pay Precharge to qualify the customer and if it passes their fraud checks, they will reimburse or fight the chargeback.
They might be maintaining their own repository of problem customers here: http://www.chargebackfile.com/
Hope this is helpful to anyone considering mitigating chargeback risk.
Re: Why was a scam company able to raise $76 Million Series B?
#184Because the scam works.
Re: Why was a scam company able to raise $76 Million Series B?
#185Earlier quoted context omitted.
The grandparent's link says "Each credit can be redeemed for any JustFab style on the site." Seems to me that they're saying if you're a member but didn't make your decision for your free (sunk cost) product by the 6th, they charge you and turn it into store credit. It's not like they're charging you and saying "too bad, you don't get anything."
Ok, I see. So that's probably reasonable. And it's now even more clear that the whole thing is somewhat confusing.
It may be different, yes, and I can relate to the OP's original complaint from his girlfriend. Still, given the language used on the site and the (albeit weird) use of a "credit" that can be used in the future for each month you don't buy something, it doesn't seem unfair at all to me.
I will say that the negative attention this confusion could bring them is more harmful to them than if they revamped the purchase process to just make it crystal clear what you're buying.
From my experience at Poll Everywhere, the "sidebar" on the checkout process does not get read by anyone, anytime. For some reason, the sidebar becomes a blindspot and is ignored (at least in our testing) during a checkout process and so is thus not a great spot to put reminders about how you're joining a membership and will be charged monthly if that is the only place is is put.