Ripehouse subscription

Hi,

Last year I subscribed to ripehouse.com.au and 3 weeks ago noticed they've charged me for another 12 months membership. They had an automatic with-drawl setup on my account and have charged me another 12 months.

I emailed them 2 weeks ago when I realised the missing money and was contacted a day or two later by a woman saying that they would action the refund within 10 days but since then this has not been done and they are not replying to my email at all. I called them and they mentioned they had sent me a email notice telling me they were going to withdraw the money however the email was sent from a very long (spam like) email address (not from the ripehouse domain) which unsurprisingly went straight to my spam folder. It had no mention of Ripehouse on it and simply said "Subscription to rhannualweb"

I called them again yesterday and was told we will action the refund within 10 days which is extremely frustrating as this was what I was told 3 weeks ago. What's more is that yesterday I asked the lady to email me that response so I at least have it on record. If they are doing it then they should have no issue responding to my email to make it formal. They have not done this still.

I've logged a dispute with my bank now so it's in their hands. $595 is a significant amount of money.

Is there anything else I can do? Has anyone else has experienced this with them?

Tia.

 

@Ripehouse.com.au

Why not contact @Ripehouse.com.au directly? Send him a PM.

 

Hi Jacob here from Ripehouse,

The second charge amount was for the second year of a subscription and charged after a renewal email was sent.

The lady whom you spoke to may have been my wife Anna directly responding to your enquiry.

The long email was most likely due to our cms Intercom.io via the live chat response function.

Our payment provider takes up to 10 days to process the transfer back so this is what we work to. If this is not ok email directly on [email protected] with your eft details (insecure) or call me on 0468315593 to provide over the phone so i can process over the phone and cancel via our provider.

Jacob

 

Hi Jacob,

Some suggestions:

1. Do not do auto-renewal and if you do make it obvious please. $595 is a significant amount of money for most people for this kind of service. I don't remember seeing anything about an auto renewal upon subscribing and even if i did 12 months is a very long time to assume all clients want to auto renew. If customers service lapse it only takes a few minutes to renew it manually, so not a big deal to your customers. Default to non-auto renewal and if some customers want it then allow them to go in manually to set it up.

2. I highly doubt the the long email was due to cms Intercom.io via the live chat response function, as it was an automatic renewal. If you ignore point 1 above, please try better to ensure the email notification you send is considered by email service providers as legitimate email. The renewal email was not sent from your ripehouse.com mail domain, and as I mentioned there is nothing even in the email that mentions Ripehouse. The sender email address is a long string of characters which a lot of mail providers may consider to be spam email. This means the chances of it going straight into recipient's spam folders and not being noticed is very likely. I don't consider this is an adequate form of notification at all. You can talk to your I.T people about the possibility of enabling up your payment provider to send email on behalf of the ripehouse.com domain through the use of SPF and DKIM records so your payment provider is authorised to send from your ripehouse.com mail domain. DMARC will also help them in terms of policy and monitoring. You will then be able to change the from email address that is currently using the long random "string" (potentially considered as spam) to something considered more legitimate. You should also update the receipt to mention Ripehouse as "rhannualweb" is not acceptable. Even if these email end up in peoples inbox (& not their spam folders) they may not want to open them anyway as they do not look legitimate. If your payment provider can't do what I have suggested then get another payment provider who can.

3. [Initial call - 22/03] When your staff say they will action the refund within 10 days, action it please. If this can't occur for whatever reason then contact the person to let them know.

4. [Follow up call - 05/04] When someone follows up and informs you that the refund was not issued, prioritise it please. I requested an update 3 times initially via email over 3 days after 10 days post the 22nd of March and no one replied at all. I then had to call numerous times, because your 1300 number isn't always answered. Your staff told me that they will action the refund but it will take another 10 days. No reason was given for the initial refund failure. I requested your staff to email me saying that they will indeed issue the refund which they agreed to. This was not, and still has not been done.

5. I will not be emailing you my credit card details via email as this is in breach of PCI (credit card) security standards. I will wait for your payment provider to action my request and update in this thread once done.

Thank you for responding to my post here and formally acknowledging that you will indeed action the refund as I requested back on the 22nd of March. It's unfortunate that this has escalated to you.

I'll leave my dispute case in place with my bank just for the moment.

Len

 

Glad you got this resolved guys .
I also really dislike how companys do "auto renew" -especially large amounts .Hope they change their policys as its not always positive for customer relations

 

I didn't think companies were allowed to store you payment details for more than one transaction ie. Credit card numbers or bank account details without you express permission to allow multiple transactions. I think there are very strict rules about storage of these details at all. I think it's a breach of privacy legislation you may be able to make a complaint to the privacy commission.

 

Hi. Jacob from Ripehouse called me today to issue the refund via bank transfer (should clear early next week). In addition to his apology he's given me a free 12 month subscription to the service for the inconvenience. I thanked him for touching base and progressing this for me.

 

Hi Lenny,

How did you get the $595 deal for the annual subscription?

I've attended a seminar with Jacob, and they were advertising their software for $1,597?

 

Hi Tommo,

Happy to clarify.

At the time when Lenny joined us our Annual Subscription was $597.

Since that time we have invested heavily in our datasets and developers to improve the resilience and granularity of our recommendations. Back then we really only provided base level research tools - now we provide very specific LGA->suburb->street->property recommendations and now analyse 47 different datasets.

Unfortunately this investment meant that we needed to increase the subscription fee as we prefer fewer subscribers whom can access the very specific recommendations vs MANY fighting over them.

BTW - we have recently performed a full audit on our backlog of public research reports. Going back to early 2015, to Sept. 2016 when we were featured on the cover of Money Magazine (Aus. Top 133 Streets) through to our current monthly reports - our suburb/street recommendations have been delivering ~15% per annum capital growth!

As in Lenny's case, if you subscribe for fee $597 in 2015/6 - that is always locked in for you ongoing (ie. Grandfather pricing).

Hope that helps,

Jacob

 

Thanks Jacob,

Much appreciated.

 

Hi Lenny,

I am also having the same problem with them now. Actually, my history goes back last year. I had to chase them last year for a refund but had no response despite multiple follow ups. In the end, I had to appeal to Paypal to reverse on their end, which they did.
But to my surprise, I had another charge from them a couple of weeks ago. I tried to send an email to Jacob but the email bounced back.

For me, this is totally inappropriate as I had cancelled my subscription with them a year ago. I wonder how many out there are having the same issue as us. I hope this post would reach to as many people as possible so that they won't fall into the same problem.

 

@Ripehouse.com.au

 

Ripehouse.com.au - We help you invest in the Sweet Spots.
Free 14 day trial - no obligation or credit card needed! Just use the coupon code "propertychattrial" via our signup page.

 

Update ... I received the refund this morning ... all good now

 

Might pay to check your PayPal account. Look under "Settings" and then "Payments". There is an "automatic payments" function there for subscriptions.

 

Hi Jacob,
A friend of mine had the same thing happen, She was charged an annual subscription without her knowing so because it is her Ex husbands credit card, to say the least he was not impressed, she contacted Anna a few days asking for a refund after the debit was made and an email was sent to you, yet no response from you both, not very good practice or customer service from Ripehouse, I hope this can be actually be refunded asap.
Can you please reply to her email, ensuring this is going to be refunded? Ref; Pam PJ
Look forward to hearing a better result of customer service.