I created an account on Intellius to get a property search report and agreed to a $14.95 charge to my credit card. Then they offered me 25 free people lookups. When you look up a person, it activates the People Search service and you get an email from Intellius thanking you for signing up for People Search and that you will be billed $19.95 a month. When you call them, they tell you that they did inform you on their web page and that you must have agreed, and that they can only back out the charge if it is still pending. The other problem is that they save your credit card information without your permission and they refuse to remove it from their system. The offer to deactivate your account, but that doesn't remove your credit card information from their system. I would not have done business with them had I known about their business practices.
Archives.com ran an add for an annual membership to NewspaperArchives.com at the special price of $71.88. I signed up and received an email from NewspaperArchives confirming my membership and informing me that I would receive my login information in a separate email. I did not get the follow-up email. I emailed NewspaperArchives asking for my membership information and never received a response. Today I called them and spoke with someone who identified herself as Laura (but is actually Dora according to her supervisor) who proceeded to tell me that I didn't have a membership with them, that my membership was with Archives.com. I read Laura/Dora the email informing be to contact CustomerService@NewspaperARCHIVE.com for any problems. Still Laura/Dora told me there was nothing she could do and refused to help in spite of the confirmation email
I next called Archives.com and was told by Lakita to call NewspaperArchives.com and that others had complained of the same treatment. After being put on hold for 5 minutes, Lakita said she would refund the $71.88 and I could purchase the annual membership directly from NewspaperArchives.com which, by the way, is $99. When I told her that I wanted the same deal that was offered me, she would only honor the refund.
Next call was back to NewspaperArchives.com and this time I was connected to Liz. Liz was far different than Laura/Dora. She actually fixed my login and emailed me the information so I could successfully logged in.
Although I was able to login in the end, I believe there is something nefarious about these two companies. First they told me that they are unrelated, but how is Archives able to refund money from a company they are not related to? Also, why does NewspaperArchives.com have all my information when they say I don't have account with them? I won't be renewing my membership when the year is up.
