How common is this scam?
I've been meaning to write about my horrible experience with RealAudio
for a while now, but Jeremy
Zawodny beat me to it. Except, son of a gun, he's writing about
Audible.com. Well, Real does the exact same thing, but with additional
layers of stupidity.
Like Audible, you can sign up online for Real but you must call them in
order to cancel. Here's where Real makes it even worse. You can sign up
with any browser (I used OmniWeb) but when I tried to cancel online I
was blocked from their site because "your browser is not supported."
So I went back online with Internet Explorer then found out I had to
make a voice call in order to cancel. In other words, they'll take
money from OmniWeb users, but they sniff the user agent when you try to
cancel and put up an artificial barrier based on your software.
Next, when you call the number you're given, the recorded message give
you a different number to call if you want to cancel your subscription.
The new number is only staffed during certain hours, but you don't find
that out until you call it.
When I finally got thru to a person who could cancel my account, he did
so quickly and without hassle. Except, I got charged again the next
month. However nice and efficient he was, they still didn't cancel my
damn subscription. Aaarrggh.
A phone call to my credit card company put an end to that nonsense.
And, to echo Jeremy's story, that's how Real lost a customer for life.
8:19:54 AM 
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