Complaint Review: Passport To Fun - Simple Escapes - Bargain Network - Internet

After ordering business cards online from vistaprint.com, during checkout, there was an extremely inconspicuous opt-in box for a "trial" membership to "passport to fun" - this box was actually checked by default, requiring the user to deliberately opt OUT of this unsolicited offer, before continuing on to complete the intended transaction. Since we had no cause to suspect a third-party company would have set a trap , we never saw this. Never had any clue it was even there, or that we now were enrolled in a program we wanted nothing to do with.

We received no confirmation, email, letter, phone call, no notice at all that we had been enrolled in any type of trial membership that would require cancellation to avoid incurring further charges.

Months later, we began receiving delivery of an unsolicited magazine subscription, for reasons unknown to us. Over time, we began to notice monthly deductions of approximately $15 from our account, that neither I nor my wife authorized.

After examining our statements, we found the culprit. Running a quick Internet search for "Passport to Fun", we soon realized that this company was running a nationwide scam that was affecting thousands and thousands of people. Attempts to contact Passport to Fun were largely unsuccessful. Requests for cancellation (of a membership that was never truly authorized!) result in psuedonymous call center employees stating that the membership is cancelled - yet the charges continue each month.

Further research of consumer-alert sites found that many people victimized by this company attempted to close their targeted bank and credit accounts, and open new ones, in an attempt to escape the relentless theft. This did not work. In many cases, the charges followed the consumer to the new account, and repeated attempts to block the charges through bank or credit company oversight had little to no effect.

Eventually, after months of failed phone and email efforts, I did get ahold of an actual person on the phone who, following a conversation filled with false courtesy on my part, actively cancelled this membership. Although this person was quite inconsistent (repeatedly alluding to Passport to Fun by other names and then correcting herself, as though she were juggling a number of different phone lines for front companies) and was unable to answer what exactly I was enrolled in and what I was supposed to have been getting as a benefit of this membership, I have not been charged since. The mystery magazines have also stopped arriving. I am among the lucky few.

Passport to Fun continues to steal without any consequences whatsoever. This company operates with impugnity, because their practices - though demonstrably immoral, unethical, greedy and WRONG - apparently do not violate enough existing criminal laws to warrant prosecution. Or perhaps the "political will" within the Consumer Protection Agency, to find and punish these theives, is not sufficient enough to even justify an effort - strange, considering the volume of people affected by the deceptive practices of this fly-by-night scam. Somewhere, someone is incredibly rich as a result of this criminal practice - and that someone needs to be incarcerated. This company, and all of it's shadow d.b.a.'s MUST be eliminated.

StopPassportToFun

seattle, Washington

U.S.A.