Two years ago, when Photobucket ceased being a “free” site, and suddenly increased their “premium account” fees, we asked them to close our account. It took a month, but finally the account was closed - or so we thought. We had been paying the $39.95 per annum for the “hassle free” access, and assumed that would end.
Well, yesterday our PayPal account was charged $39.95 from Photobucket. We protested the charge with PayPal, and PayPal quickly got back to us. They said that the agreement (between Photobucket/PayPal/Us) was still in place, so they had to honor the $39.95 charge.
However, since we cannot get Photobucket to sever the agreement, PayPal will do so - hopefully disallowing future access of our account by Photobucket.
My question is, have any of you encountered this yet? And if you had the agreement with Photobucket/PayPal, is it severed? Or not?
That is a real bummer, mobilman. I cannot be of any help here, since my PB account was the free type. As soon as they started charging fees for accounts, I simply stopped using the PB website. Fortunately, PB never had access to any of my credit cards or PayPal.
I never signed up for “Recurring Payments” when I did have an active account they would send me an email saying payment was due.
I think by default accounts were set to automatically renew unless you actively told them not to. I was “grandfathered” to the old rate until May of this year. I do not plan to renew.
Pretty sad way to go…A number of us were using PB, and I suspect many would have gladly paid a nominal fee for the service if the onset of it was done properly.
In our case, PayPal has assured us that the Photobuckets “door” to our PayPal is closed, and that is a nice assurance. While we could fight the $40 they took from us, I don’t think its worth the effort and in fact is very likely a losing battle.
Since you closed your account with PB 2 years ago, I’d take them up on it and contact them again via email. If it wasn’t renewed one year after dropping the account but is after two - that’s an error on them.
I would fight it further with PB. $40 is $40…but that’s just me.
I think that PayPal shares the blame. PP claims that it has to honor the agreement, but if PP has the ability to confirm the existence of an agreement with PB, then why didn’t PP take notice of an absence of any 2018 billing. And, since the OP previously cancelled the agreement, presumably in 2017, and PB failed to notify PP, the agreement has been breached. PP should refund the $39.99 to the OP and then PP should fight it out with PB. That is what PP claims that it will do with erroneous charges.
I also. We see the problems that MR has with the internet, so there may not be anything delibertately sinister about the charge. Just more of PB’s incompetance.
PP makes it clear you are first to try to work it out with the seller (PB) before you go to their resolution center.
I’ve had good luck with my credit card company in dealing with problems, for instance I made a campaign contribution for $X and there were two charges for $X. Also had a mailorder charge for a store out west that I did not make. A call to the credit card company fixed both without any charge or hassle to me.
With all the hacking of websites, I a haven’t had the same credit card number for two years. An unintended safeguard of using a credit card.
I’d been with a free photobucket account for a number of years, but eventually opted for a paid account, as internet traffic, especially by search engines, was using-up my monthly allotment of bandwidth in two weeks or less.
The paid account allowed unlimited bandwidth and an enormous amount of free photo storage. My photos are mostly a very small file-size, so with almost 6500 photos stored there, I’ve used just slightly over 5% of my allotted storage!
When photobucket changed their policies, they “grandfathered” my paid account (due in August each year) until the end of 2017 (at no charge), at which time they offered me a better version of the account I had, with only a minimal increase in cost. Since I was paying anyways, I accepted their offer and am generally pleased with their service.
The site, I believe, has been sold (or perhaps merely structurally re-organised) and while it is sometimes a bit on the slow side, continues to serve me well. Their tech support has been outstanding any time I required assistance, certainly going well-beyond what I would have expected.
I previously payed when my account was due to expire, but eventually signed-on for automatic renewal. I’ve made provision for having that cancelled when I expire, so when my photos here disappear, you’ll know that I have disappeared too.
lesson to be learned, always have auto payments by credit card, much easier to fix. I do have a pp account but all things I have set up with for auto pay are card linked. That being said if you contact PB and don’t get it fixed, go back to PP and talk to a higher up.
The one thing I have learned is to never auto renew or autopay any recurring bills/obligations. If you are in a dispute you are better off holding your money rather than trying to get the other party to fork over a refund. And, I would also consider copying the Attorney General’s office in the state where you live. Don’t threaten PP or PB or whoever, just do it. AGs love to get involved with consumer disputes because usually they don’t have anything to do with the really sexy criminal cases. Check and see if there is a consumer fraud division in your AGs office, and copy them, or just copy the AG directly. It may take a while but you should get a response.
If that had been the case, I would have opted out, too, but the account I have allows unlimited bandwidth and storage amounts far beyond what I will ever need. I currently have over 6400 photos in photobucket, using only 5.17% of my allowable storage capacity.
The cost is just slightly over 10% of that $400.00 amount they were originally throwing around, and even taking into account the fact that I’m paying an exchange rate of about 25% due to the lousy Canadian dollar, I still feel the price to be reasonable.
If you don’t have another hosting site, it may be worthwhile to check them out.
