Interesting comments from the "http://lucieanne.hubpages.com/hub/Be2-dating-is-a-scam-Beware"
andy egg
is getting quite large.
I thought it best to extract some of the interesting comments from the
thread so it is easier to digest:
sent oct 2011, Rolfe;
"June and others re I.J.
The letter that I had was from an automated office in St. Albans. I
actually went to the address a while ago whilst I was down that way
and it only gets serviced once per week. I guess that the others in
Liverpool and Ireland may be the same.
The letter is generated in Germany and electronicaly printed in and
sent from St. Albans.The proof is in the envelope flap so keep it.
ONCE AGAIN DO NOT GET FOOLED by all of this German/ Luxembourg law
crap because that is exactly what it is,
Respond in writing asking for signed copies of the alleged agreement.
Keep copies, send by recorded delivery and sit back,
Going to court is the last thing they want or need. Let this site know
if it happens because a lot of us can't wait to have a day out with
I.J. or Be2."
andy egg
Rolfe oct 2011
"Thomas. My experience with be2 and I.J. are set out in my blogs.
Follow my advice which was suggested by my solicitor who was always
convinced that they would be laughed out of court with the good
possibilty of costs and perhaps damages.
Even after I was under threat of I.J. taking me to court I was getting
up to a dozen 'Perfect Mathes' a day for a few months.
At first I sent them back to customer services and then set up an auto
delete. Be2 'Perfect matches' stopped a while ago but I get a few
Russian women about 19yrs old wanting to love me. I am 66??? Don't
worry about your profile it will quietly die when they see there is no
money in it.
My best advice to all of you and myself is to get on with your lives.
Only contact Be2 or I.J. by recorded delivery. Print off proof of
delivery.
As for our Dom and watchdog I'm not holding my breath. They are in it
for the money, which incidentally so are Be2 and I.J.
Google run dozens of complaint sites against Be2. So do Facebook.
YET they still run their adverts. It reallly is all about money. The
problem is that it could so easily be ours.
Lucianne must have cost them a fair amount. I am still waiting for her
text."
andy egg
"Hi Jae
Unbelievably i have received a confirmation of cancellation email this
afternoon!!!! I can't thank everyone on here enough. The advice was
fantastic. I'm not sure what did it in the end but i did email annabel
marshall repeatedly quoting how they were in breach of their own terms
and conditions which made the membership null and void. I sent this
repeadedly over 2 days.I did send a fax yesterday but did not include
any personal details just my email address and username as clearly
stated in their terms and conditions section 13. I told them i had
proof of transmission, had sent a letter by recorded delivery and
confirmation of receipt of my email. I tried for ages to get to the
online cancellation page this morning to get a cancellation code but
kept getting the fax template. What i discovered for those of you who
need some proof for your bank that they have received your email even
if it is the standard automated one is that when you get to the page
where you have to select an option for leaving, if you tick that you
found the site difficult to understand or that your matches were
unsatisfactory you get an immediate reply as follows
I write because you told us that you wished to end your Premium
Membership as you felt you had not got as much as you anticipated for
your money.
I am sorry that you feel this way and hope that I may be of some
assistance in helping you get more from the service, if that is what
you wish.
It is of course inevitable that people do have different experiences
when using our site. Some find love quickly and easily and are
delighted with the service, others are less happy with their matches
or the style of the service and, perhaps like yourself, feel the
system has not given them as much as they hoped for.
In my experience there are often fairly simple reasons why a person
has had a less satisfactory experience with be2, and that many of
these can be addressed quite easily. For example, fairly small changes
in your profile and search settings can produce big improvements in
the matches you receive and the responses you get to your messages.
It’s worth remembering that many people do find love with be2. We have
20 million users and over 40% of those who leave be2 tell us they are
doing so because they have met someone with our help.
If you wish, I can personally look into your account and history with
be2 in more detail and in conversation with you, try to work through
some of the issues that may have prevented you from finding what you
are looking for with the service.
If you’re interested in this offer, please write back to me.
All the best
James Pearson
be2 – Customer Service
This clearly acknowledges that you wish to cancel your membership. If
you check the boxes with negative comments you get nothing. Under the
'other' section to make comments there is a message saying if you have
any question for customer support click here. That takes you into an
email titled ONLINE CANCELLATION. i sent this demanding immediate
cancellation, every half hour and amazingly got a response!!! I also
emailed my wish to cancel to bil...@be2.com as well as the customer
service. Not sure what worked in the end but i just wanted proof of
cancellation so even if they do scam me in the future (and i'll be
watching my statement forevermore) i've got proof. One of the best
pieces of advice which i followed was to go in and delete all my
personal details before writing to cancel. I figured that i wasn't
going to get a reply so i would take the chance that they wouldnt have
a back up of my address. I just put a fullstop in every line. i became
a 101 year old man from united arab emirates for a while!
The most important thing was that i found this thread immediately
after paying my membership which made me take immediate action. I
reread the terms and conditions in fine detail and saw that if you use
your membership at all in the 2 week cooling of period you are unable
to cancel the following 6 months. i made sure i didnt use any premium
membership facilites at all. i didnt read any emails or anything.
Thanks again. I'll support any campaign and try and spread the word."
UK London Pissed Off Guy
Like many others, I took a trial subscription only to discover months
later that my credit card had been charged with no prior warning. I
appealed to them to refund my subscription, as many have done, and was
also told it was not possible. I immediately emailed them to cancel my
subscription. However, what i didn't do was study all the fine detail
of the Ts&Cs to find out that cancellations where only acceptable via
fax (whatever one of those is). Immediately after requesting my
subscription be cancelled, I stopped getting any email alerts from
them leading me to believe I had successfully cancelled - don't be
fooled!! I have repeatedly asked for a phone number to call (their
help desk appears to be unmanned as dozens of calls have failed to
find anyone working). Then, months later, they did exactly the same
thing to me again! This time I managed to stop the payment as it
appeared wrongly on my statement and hence I assumed fradulent use of
my card. Perhaps contractually I should not have done this, in
hindsight. However, know full well that this company is relying on
people faxing cancellations and ignoring plees to be reasonable, I am
more than convinced now that this is not a reputable company to deal
with.
This company relies on the majority of us not studying the small
print. Unless you do, I strongly, strongly urge you never to deal with
this company.
andy
My mother-in-law also got scammed by BE2. I researched their company
and found they are registered in Switzerland. I contacted the Swiss
equivalent of the Dept of Fair Trading (SECO) with my complaint. They
administer unfair business dealings and got a positive response:
"under Swiss law with dating agencies, a contract must be able to be
immediately terminated at any time no matter what the terms and
conditions of the contracts between the parties states". By refusing
to accept cancellation of membership, BE2 is breaking Swiss law, and
by continuing to take monies from accounts are committing a fraud. I
would recommend everyone who has been stung by BE@ write to the SECO
and complain. they can then shut the company down. Contact details:
Eidgenössisches Volkswirtschaftsdepartement EVD
Staatssekretariat für Wirtschaft SECO
Organisation, Recht und Akkreditierung
Holzikofenweg 36, 3003 Bern
Tel +41 31 325 34 47
Fax +41 31 324 09 56
E-Mail: lena....@seco.admin.ch
Web: www.seco.admin.ch
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
gotem 6 weeks ago (Nov 2011)
here is the reply I got from SECO in Switzerland:
Thank you for your e-mail dated October 27 2011. The State Secretariat
for Economic Affairs (SECO) is the competent authority for all
questions relating to unfair competition, scam or misleading
advertising.
We know the mentioned practices and also the company “be2 GmbH” you
allude to in your e-mail and we perfectly understand your resentments
and the worries of your mother in law. We have recently received other
complaints concerning this topic. We are about to amass material and
reconsider possible further steps or appropriate measures against
these fraudulent practices.
However, I have to admit, that we cannot assist you to stop the
process of debt collection or to get back the money. As a part of the
Swiss Confederation we have the authority to ban unfair practices, but
we don’t have the competence to interfere in problems of private law.
According to Swiss law, contracts concerning partner or dating
agencies must be cancellable at any time (Art. 406d OR). Therefore the
termination of your mother in law must be accepted by “be2” at any
time, regardless of what their general conditions say. And if the
cancellation become legally effective, there exists no payment
obligation.
It will maybe be helpful, if your mother in law describes “be2” once
more – by letter or e-mail – her position and make clear, that they
have to accept the cancellation and remove her from the database and
that she don’t pay any invoices.
We hope that this information is of some help to you and that there
results a positive outcome in that case.
Kind regards from Switzerland
Lena Geiser
Ressort Recht
Eidgenössisches Volkswirtschaftsdepartement EVD
Staatssekretariat für Wirtschaft SECO
Organisation, Recht und Akkreditierung
Holzikofenweg 36, 3003 Bern
Tel +41 31 325 34 47
Fax +41 31 324 09 56
E-Mail: lena....@seco.admin.ch
Web: www.seco.admin.ch
andy
the emails he sent them
Jason 5 weeks ago (nov 2011)
FYI the address in the post above has changed the email address for
the European Consumer Centre to ask them to investigate is
e...@tsi.org.uk and here's a copy of my email to them.
Hi,
I have found your contact details through trawling through the
hundreds of complaints about the Be2 dating website scam which
operates out of Luxemburg.
Currently I am in a battle with them to get my contract terminated and
have lost 300 UK pounds to them so far. There just seems to be no way
of terminating the premium contract.
I have enclosed a copy of their website to demonstrate how difficult
it is to terminate. Basically having tried a few times to find the end
contract page you are told to fax or send the letter as confirmation.
I have already done this back in May 2011 but had no response from
them. I assumed as I heard nothing from them since then that all was
over but have now just been charged another 149 pounds.
Unfortunately I suffer from chronic kidney disease and hypertension
and this is not doing my health any good. In fact because this company
has stolen 149 pounds from my account with no notification or invoice
I am left financially short for the month and unable to pay for my
medication. I am now physically in pain because of them.
I read in the posts that according to Swiss law contracts pertaining
to dating sites can be terminated at any time therefore the emails and
faxes I have sent should of been recognised by Be2 and accepted
however they have not accepted my repeated emails asking for
termination of which I have many trails from.
Please I understand that it might not be possible for you to get my
money back but could you investigate this company and their practices?
Clearly from the thousands of blog entries and sites there are many
people around the world who are not happy with them.