JustFab? Nope. Not Fab.

justfab.com

Beware JustFab.com!  JustFab.com is not fabulous.  It is a total rip-off and very close to a scam (although I'm sure it's perfectly legal).

It is a shoe and purse online membership club that calls itself a "lifestyle fashion company."

They talk about how you make your own choices and place your own orders, but that’s not actually the case.  What happens is that on the sixth of every month they automatically charge your credit card $39.95.  You have from the first through the fifth of the month to go onto their website and click “skip.”  This cannot be done at any time except the first through the fifth.  So if you have surgery scheduled, you’re going to have to get up in the middle of surgery and get onto that website.  You can also call, but every time I’ve tried to call it’s said there is a 13 minute wait because of an unusually high call volume.  I think they’re just randomly sticking a time on their and that there is no such thing as an unusually high call volume – they just don’t have a large enough staff.

 Remember the Columbia Records and RCA mail order music clubs? 

I assumed that as a former music mail order club member, I could handle this. In June I realized that I didn’t want to place my first month of orders in July, so I went to the website to click the “skip month” button that my friend told me was very easy to find and the folks on the website had instructed me to use if I didn't want my account to be deducted.  I couldn’t find it. I’ve since discovered that the reason I couldn’t find it is because it wasn’t July 1, yet.

Of course, this morning I received an email stating that they had processed my July 6 “order” for $39.95, and now I have a “credit” in my account to use towards a purchase on the website.  Since the money had been removed from my credit card, I went to take a look at the website.

Unfortunately, I cannot wear high heels because of my back, the flats are all paper thin and offer no support, and the shoes are pointed but I’m a clutz who trips on those longer toes.  So it took quite a while to find an acceptable pair of shoes.

I ordered the shoes and went to check out only to discover that the shoes were only $29.95 but that you have to place a $39 order for free shipping.  Since my credit was for $39.95, I wandered around and found a piece of jewelry for $9.95.  The total order price would then be $39.90.

I placed the order only instead of using my “credit” of $39.95 that I had “received” from yesterday’s “order” (seriously, they call their auto credit card deduction an order and even assign it an order number!), the order was charged to my credit card.  I logged onto my bank site and yup, my credit card was showing two orders in two days from Justfab.com.

I sent an email and was told that certain items are not eligible to be used with the credit.  Remember, that credit was just money that they yanked off my credit card because they had my credit card number.

The email was replied to within a few hours, and I was told that to use my “credit” I should just place an order and check out, the “credit” will automatically be used. Then she said, “Certain items cannot be applied towards the credit.”  There was no information included about which items or why I couldn’t use my money towards those items.

I attempted to call the company at this point, and but there was a 13 minute wait, so I used the live chat.  The live chat consisted of a woman who told me that I had two recent orders – the July 6 “order” of $39.95 for my “credit,” and today’s (July 7) order of $39.90. 

I managed to get her to cancel my $39.90 order fairly easily, but she refused to cancel the “order” of $39.95 because it is now a “credit.”  

Just to make this clear – when they auto deduct money out of my credit card for use on their website, they can call it whatever they want, but that doesn’t make it an order.  See the following definitions from thefreedictionary.com:

• ORDER:  (commerce)  A commission or instruction to produce or supply something in return for payment.
• CREDIT:  “The positive balance or amount remaining in a person’s account.  A credit line.”

So I told her to re-place my order for $39.90 and that the company could swallow the nickel thus making my order $39.95.  After 20 minutes back and forth, she placed my new $39.90 order using my $39.95 “credit.” 

Once that was taken care of, I told her to cancel my membership and remove my credit card from their system.  She told me that isn’t possible and that the only way I could do that would be to contact my bank.  I attempted to delete my credit card number from the website, and it doesn’t allow you to do so.  I pointed out that the website doesn’t allow you to cancel a credit card number, and I verified that the only way to get their website to start charging me forever would be to call my bank.

That was insane, so I called the phone number again.  I only had to wait 12 minutes to get someone on the phone who then decided to explain to me repeatedly that I’d already placed my $39.95 “order” by not clicking “skip this month” between July 1 and July 5.  I said I understood all of that but wanted to end all future deductions from my credit card, cancel membership, whatever it was that I needed to do to make them stop taking money out of my credit card every month.

After 10 minutes on the phone, he finally agreed to end my membership.  Only then he starts talking about how I can keep my membership but end my auto “orders.”  To be completely honest, I’m not even sure if I have a membership with this website or not.  I can tell you that Alex, case number 13793395, swears that they won’t charge my credit card again.  We’ll see what happens!

UPDATE:  07/07/15 at 3:20 pm, I just received another email from justfab telling me that a store credit and a member credit are the same thing and that both can be used for any item in this store.  This is a direct contradiction to their previous email, which stated that member credits cannot be used towards certain items.  Double speak, anybody?