Beware

I confess. I’m not very good at keeping my checkbook. Not terrible, mind you -- I haven’t written a bad check in years -- but not great either.

My usual procedure when I use my debit card is to stuff the receipt in my checkbook and then periodically go through and write them all down. Then I call the bank, make sure their balance is at least roughly comparable to mine, and check what checks/debits have cleared.

Occasionally there will be a charge from the bank that I don’t have recorded. If it’s just a small charge, I usually just assume it’s a receipt that got misplaced and let it go.

I was going through this procedure this week, and there was a charge for $4.95 that I had no record of. This caught my eye because I rarely put an amount this small on my debit card. Plus, it sounded familiar. I scanned my check register and noticed that I had the same charge one month earlier. I got out my paper statement, and it said the charge was from Juno.

I used Juno as my Internet/e-mail service for about seven years. They took the $9.95/month charge out of my checking account. Their service was satisfactory, but alas, dial-up Internet has become all but obsolete, and Juno doesn’t offer DSL, so several months ago we made the switch to AT&T.

At that point I called and cancelled my service with Juno. I remember talking to a man there who, after I cancelled the service, told me about Juno Speedband, which I could have as a backup service, in case my DSL service ever went down. He told me he would give me a month free, and I said that was fine. I am positive that I did not knowingly agree to pay for this service at any time.

After I saw my bank statement, I looked up my Juno account online. They had been charging me for 3 months. The first month was $6+ because they charged me for some extra days. I was FURIOUS. I decided to wait until after work to call them so I could calm down a little bit.

When I finally called them and began to explain the problem, the lady began a well-rehearsed speech about how I really needed this service, in case my DSL ever failed, and it would fail. It was obvious that she was accustomed to these types of calls. She was talking so fast I could hardly understand what she was saying, but I finally interrupted her and told her that I did not want this service, and what was more, I had not authorized them to take money from my checking account, and that I considered this to be stealing! She said they would end my service that very day.

I told her that wasn’t enough. I wanted my money refunded that they had already taken out. She said she wasn’t authorized to do that. I told her to find someone who was. She put me on hold. She came back and told me they would refund me $9.90 for 2 months. I told her they still owed me another $6+. She said they could only refund for up to 2 months because they didn’t know what transpired in the conversation between me and the man I talked to when I cancelled my service. She said they would send me an e-mail confirming this agreement. "Thank you for using Juno. Please consider us for your future needs." Click.

That was Monday. I finally got the e-mail yesterday, but I haven’t yet received a refund. I still have hope that they will at least do what they said they would do, and at that point I am going to call my bank and tell them not to allow any future transactions from Juno.

Thankfully this was not a huge amount of money, but the fact that they took money out my account without my permission makes me furious! So my warning to you is, if you have any charges on your checking account that you can’t account for, check them out. It would be nice if we could trust people and companies to behave ethically, but unfortunately, we can’t in this day and age. We have to protect ourselves.