Opt out or be charged!

Watch out! a major on line company automatically charges insurance unless you read the small print and deliberately uncheck the box. Large print is used to guide you towards a postage option and much smaller print and a different symbol warns you to uncheck the box if you do not want the service. A further trick seems to be that this cost is added after you have seen the invoice so you feel that you have been given a total and then are charged for these unwanted extras. This trick works well when the user pays with PayPal because you agree to one price and then get slugged the extra. I would like to see this practice made illegal.

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Care to name that company?

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Shopping Square. And these are the extra characters I must use in order to post.

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Jetstar used to do this when you booked flights on their website. I woke up to it when the quoted amount did not match the final invoiced amount. You had to un-check several items, including insurance and (I think) extra luggage allowance. I haven’t used them for a while, so don’t know whether it has been stopped.

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The Australian Consumer Law has provisions about “drip pricing” where the full price must be disclosed early in the on-line process. “If during an online purchasing process you experience additional charges that were not adequately disclosed at the beginning of the process, you can lodge a complaint with the ACCC.” to quote from the ACCC web site.

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Be fair if you revealed the name of the company

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please name the thieves so that they can receive the advertising they deserve

@jadak1522, @michael14moran - @andrew.p mentioned it was Shopping Square.

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I thought it might be them. I have killed their emails too. got me only once. And lost me with that transaction.

Bangkok Airways (www.bangkokair.com) still does this and I was caught on 6th May with a US$7.50 charge for travel insurance with Allianz. As soon as I saw the total on the confirmation I asked for the unwanted cover to be cancelled. Both to Bangkok Air & Allianz insurance. To their credit I was advised on 8 May that the US$7.50 would be refunded to my credit card as refunded to my credit card within 30 days. Not yet received but a lesson to check the screen when booking online closely for the auto ticked boxes for insurance that you do not want.

One of the uglies with your experience is if you paid the $USD7.50 with an $AUD card it is converted at the xrate on the day. When you receive the $USD7.50 refund 30 days later the xrate will be on that day and could result in your receiving more or less than your original $AUD amount to your card. You win some and lose some; $USD7.50 is going to be noise, but I experienced that “refund magic” with a moderately $$ purchase and the final difference after refund was in the (-)$AUD20 range :frowning: Yes, it could as well have been (+)$AUD20, but.

And further to the FX rate your card issuer may also have charged you for an International transaction.

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Hasn’t changed @petermac

I’ve enjoyed to currency fluctuations loss too. To make it worse, I was charged international currency exchange fees in both directions too.