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Skillshare Scamming LTT Fans

Mehdi At

Hello,

 

Just a simple Google search (only search Skillshare scam) will show you hundreds of people complaining that even if you cancel during the trial period, Skillshare will charge you and will not provide any refund. They don't even allow you to remove information about your credit card which is bizarre. I had to contact them after I cancelled my trial and had them withdraw my credit card information and delete my account after about 20 emails were sent back and forth, and eventually they did it.

 

After 4 days I see $120 charge on my credit card even though I don't have any account with them anymore! And they don't respond to any of my emails plus they don't have any phone number in their contact. It's also bizarre (and definitely intentional) that they don't send you confirmations when you cancel your trial period or even register with them.

 

I registered via LTT link and got scammed like many others. I have been a fan of LTT for the past many years and I trusted them. Be careful that if you trust LTT doesn't mean you have to trust the companies that pay them for advertisement. 

 

Don't be me, be smart and don't get scammed by Skillshare.

 

Cheers,

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LTT has always been adamant about having good sponsors and working with them to resolve any issues.  They're not one to just shill something and leave you to the wolves, knowing it's crap.  Perhaps @nicklmg or someone can address this as they have many times with various companies successfully before.

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4 minutes ago, mehdiataei said:

They don't even allow you to remove information about your credit card which is bizarre.

4 minutes ago, mehdiataei said:

After 4 days I see $120 charge on my credit card even though I don't have any account with them anymore!

Stuff like this is why I always use Paypal, instead of giving any website my card-details: with Paypal, I can just simply cancel any subscription from Paypal's end and there's nothing a scammy or unscrupulous website can do about it -- they can't prevent me from canceling any recurring payments/subscriptions, they can't charge me anything afterwards and they can't share any useful details with anyone else, either.

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That sounds really bad. Go forward and issue chargeback. If your bank asks details, show them emails.

 

@CPotter

@LinusTech

 

This wouldn't be first sponsor LMG drops for bad customer service.

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5 minutes ago, WereCatf said:

Stuff like this is why I always use Paypal, instead of giving any website my card-details: with Paypal, I can just simply cancel any subscription from Paypal's end and there's nothing a scammy or unscrupulous website can do about it -- they can't prevent me from canceling any recurring payments/subscriptions, they can't charge me anything afterwards and they can't share any useful details with anyone else, either.

Thanks for the tip! I didn't know that. Actually, I was googling for such a solution! I will be doing this onwards. Unfortunately not every site accepts PayPal. 

 

Also, I won't trust any small company with my credit info ever again. Every scam happens in these types of small online services.

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20 minutes ago, LogicalDrm said:

That sounds really bad. Go forward and issue chargeback. If your bank asks details, show them emails.

 

@CPotter

@LinusTech

 

This wouldn't be first sponsor LMG drops for bad customer service.

Already done that but my bank has horrible costumer service and do not offer much of a protection (RogersBank in Canada). They have opened a dispute but it will take 60 days to have any answer. I have all the emails and all the communications (If anyone doesn't believe what I am saying I am willing to share emails and transaction details here so others become aware and protected.)

 

I look forward to receiving some reply from Skillshare before 60 days. I have recorded everything well and have sent them several notices of cancellation of the trial by email and have already asked them for a refund (they provide refund after you have been billed for 7 days, I sent the request 1 day after I was charged).

 

I am not the first person facing these type of problems e.g. 

 

 

 I couldn't remove my credit info on their website and it was a red flag so I emailed their customer service not only to delete my credit information but also to completely remove my account. Apparently they did so, but they billed me for a year after four days.

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27 minutes ago, Ryan_Vickers said:

LTT has always been adamant about having good sponsors and working with them to resolve any issues.  They're not one to just shill something and leave you to the wolves, knowing it's crap.  Perhaps @nicklmg or someone can address this as they have many times with various companies successfully before.

Thank you for your response. I was hoping to prevent others from falling into the "trial period" trap as I've seen their ads on LTT recently. The crazy thing is that although I have been charged for the full year my account is now a "free account" (as my trial period has ended) and I don't even have access to their premium content.

 

Some may say it's only $120, but being scammed like this hurts much more than that...

 

Anyways thank you very much for the follow up!

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9 minutes ago, mehdiataei said:

Thank you for your response. I was hoping to prevent others from falling into the "trial period" trap as I've seen their ads on LTT recently. The crazy thing is that although I have been charged for the full year my account is now a "free account" (as my trial period has ended) and I don't even have access to their premium content.

 

Some may say it's only $120, but being scammed like this hurts much more than that...

 

Anyways thank you very much for the follow up!

I agree the money isn't that big a deal, but it is the principle to me.

 

I have full no questions asked legal coverage with my current employer. So I would probably escalate this to a legal issue if only to make them pay for some hefty legal fees for their lawyers and mine.

 

The problem is they would probably issue the refund the second a lawyer made contact. Which means you blast them online which you appear to be doing nicely.

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1 minute ago, AngryBeaver said:

I agree the money isn't that big a deal, but it is the principle to me.

 

I have full no questions asked legal coverage with my current employer. So I would probably escalate this to a legal issue if only to make them pay for some hefty legal fees for their lawyers and mine.

 

The problem is they would probably issue the refund the second a lawyer made contact. Which means you blast them online which you appear to be doing nicely.

Unfortunately I don't have access to such resources :(

 

See here: https://www.sitejabber.com/reviews/skillshare.com I am not the only one, there are hundreds of people facing the same exact problem especially when using promo codes. I will wait a few days and if I didn't get any response I will just cancel my credit card since I don't want them to apply any more charges on my account.

 

 

I have bought several things from LTT sponsored links over the past 5 years (I even come back to their website to use their affiliated links when doing any purchase on Amazon, etc.). This website is scamming people and it is unfortunate that they gain reputation and trust through channels like LTT. 

 

 

 

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1 hour ago, mehdiataei said:

Already done that but my bank has horrible costumer service and do not offer much of a protection (RogersBank in Canada). They have opened a dispute but it will take 60 days to have any answer. I have all the emails and all the communications (If anyone doesn't believe what I am saying I am willing to share emails and transaction details here so others become aware and protected.)

The 60 days sounds about right. Thats what my bank did after I discovered that my card details were shared and used without my knowledge. Closed card, disputed payments and asked for new card. They said it will take 1-2 months to handle things as it was company registered outside of my country. So banks will handle it between them and it takes time.

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Update: I finally got in touch with a sales person after two days by sending a lot of emails and messaging them on Twitter. Let's see how it goes .... Hate that I have to waste my time on something that should never have happened if their practices were less shady.

 

When I couldn't remove my credit card, I checked out their source code and noticed that they have purposefully disabled credit card removal. The site is primarily designed so that if you don't have an active membership, you would be able to remove it (and I didn't have one, see the second attached image), but they have entirely disabled it (as an after thought) to prevent you from removing your card even if you don't have an active membership.

 

photo_2019-12-14 13.23.42.jpeg

 

 

 

no-membership.png

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2 months? Thats insane. Idk much about banks in Canada but id be looking at other ones 

 

Ive had to do a number of disputes through my bank and the max i waited to have the money back in my account was the next business day. Most of the time if i call them in the morning the funds are back that day.

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8 hours ago, mehdiataei said:

Skillshare will charge you and will not provide any refund

that is quite a common scam, and best to tell the credit card and your bank that you want no charges from them anymore.

otherwise get a prepaid card with the exact amount on it, then when your done, just throw the card out after taking all the money out of it, but them prepaids cost money, whether its a card fee or monthly fee or transaction fee.

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6 hours ago, RonnieOP said:

2 months? Thats insane. Idk much about banks in Canada but id be looking at other ones 

 

Ive had to do a number of disputes through my bank and the max i waited to have the money back in my account was the next business day. Most of the time if i call them in the morning the funds are back that day.

With companies operated in another country too? I would be worried about how that bank operates if they don't take time validating things.

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3 hours ago, LogicalDrm said:

With companies operated in another country too? I would be worried about how that bank operates if they don't take time validating things.

 I should of explained it better thats my bad.

 

Theres still an investigation period that can last the 60-90 days. but instead of holding the money from me for that period i am credited the amount. If its not a legit dispute they will take the money back when the investigation is over.

 

 

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10 hours ago, amdorintel said:

that is quite a common scam, and best to tell the credit card and your bank that you want no charges from them anymore.

otherwise get a prepaid card with the exact amount on it, then when your done, just throw the card out after taking all the money out of it, but them prepaids cost money, whether its a card fee or monthly fee or transaction fee.

They don't allow you to remove your credit card info after entering it. You can't even make a change to it.

 

They count on people forgetting about their trial period. That's why that if you get the membership from any of the youtube "promotions" you have to choose the "yearly" plan so they can bill you for the whole year. 

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10 hours ago, wasab said:

I wanna try them out so I can master their skills on how to scam others. 

The whole website is a sham as well. You're better off watching youtube videos if you want to learn something.

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21 hours ago, LogicalDrm said:

That sounds really bad. Go forward and issue chargeback. If your bank asks details, show them emails.

 

@CPotter

@LinusTech

 

This wouldn't be first sponsor LMG drops for bad customer service.

 

21 hours ago, Mehdi At said:

Hello,

 

Just a simple Google search (only search Skillshare scam) will show you hundreds of people complaining that even if you cancel during the trial period, Skillshare will charge you and will not provide any refund. They don't even allow you to remove information about your credit card which is bizarre. I had to contact them after I cancelled my trial and had them withdraw my credit card information and delete my account after about 20 emails were sent back and forth, and eventually they did it.

 

After 4 days I see $120 charge on my credit card even though I don't have any account with them anymore! And they don't respond to any of my emails plus they don't have any phone number in their contact. It's also bizarre (and definitely intentional) that they don't send you confirmations when you cancel your trial period or even register with them.

 

I registered via LTT link and got scammed like many others. I have been a fan of LTT for the past many years and I trusted them. Be careful that if you trust LTT doesn't mean you have to trust the companies that pay them for advertisement. 

 

Don't be me, be smart and don't get scammed by Skillshare.

 

Cheers,

Looking into this ASAP. Jono will repond to @Mehdi At through our general email. Definitely try and issue a charge-back if you can, but we'll get you sorted. @JonoT

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41 minutes ago, CPotter said:

 

Looking into this ASAP. Jono will repond to @Mehdi At through our general email. Definitely try and issue a charge-back if you can, but we'll get you sorted. @JonoT

If possible, will LTT make an official statement once enough information has been gathered?

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10 hours ago, Mehdi At said:

They count on people forgetting about their trial period.

yup, its a scam thats been around since the first credit cards were en-mass.

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UPDATE 2: 

 

I got in contact with a manager and the issue has been resolved. Apparently, I have had also another account with the same card (my partner registered with that account). The support that I got in contact with could not find my other account (although I gave him all the information regarding my credit card and asked about it). I also suspected that I might have another account before contacting them but I couldn't login or reset the password with any of my or my partners emails. There was no way to verify that I had another account  as I couldn't find any email from Skillshare in my emails and wasn't able to reset my password (I noticed later that every reset password email went to the spam folder).

 

Nonetheless, I stand by my criticism that I had to contact them to delete credit card info even after the trial period was terminated, everyone else has to do it as well regardless of their subscription status. The user must be able to do it easily, and Skillshare should not make it long process to remove a credit card. That was all the reason I wanted to terminate my account at the beginning and what made me really nervous about their business practices, which got worse after I read online that many others had the same issue and couldn't remove their card until they got charged by Skillshare (which happened to me in this instant as well for apparently a different reason). (see the reddit page that I posted before).

 

21 hours ago, amdorintel said:

yup, its a scam thats been around since the first credit cards were en-mass.

 

 

On top of that, for using any of the promotions from YouTube you have to choose the "yearly" plan so they can bill you for the whole year and not just one month (you are not given the option to choose the monthly plan), and everyone knows (as other users here also pointed this out) that they do it because they hope that you forget about your trial period so that they can charge you a big chunk of money. This speaks for itself that they are more focused on ensuring that they can charge the customers instead of giving them a good experience. To be honest, if I were charged for just one month (instead of for the whole year), I wouldn't be worried about it this much because it wasn't that costly and I could ensure that it's canceled next month. They may say that other companies also follow the same practice when giving trial periods, but this is not true about legitimate companies like Amazon's Audible which gives you the trial period with a monthly plan.

 

Anyways, I am happy that this is resolved and I thank the manager who got in contact with me.

 

 

 

 

 

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On 12/19/2019 at 12:12 PM, CPotter said:

 

Looking into this ASAP. Jono will repond to @Mehdi At through our general email. Definitely try and issue a charge-back if you can, but we'll get you sorted. @JonoT

Thank you again for contacting me! Really shows how much you care about your audience and I haven't seen something like this from any other YouTuber. I am proud to be a decade long viewer.

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On 12/18/2019 at 8:42 PM, Mehdi At said:

Update: I finally got in touch with a sales person after two days by sending a lot of emails and messaging them on Twitter. Let's see how it goes .... Hate that I have to waste my time on something that should never have happened if their practices were less shady.

 

When I couldn't remove my credit card, I checked out their source code and noticed that they have purposefully disabled credit card removal. The site is primarily designed so that if you don't have an active membership, you would be able to remove it (and I didn't have one, see the second attached image), but they have entirely disabled it (as an after thought) to prevent you from removing your card even if you don't have an active membership.

 

photo_2019-12-14 13.23.42.jpeg

 

 

 

no-membership.png

As I explained here, this is very important to point out that when I tried to remove my credit card from my own account, I was given the message that "you can't remove your primary card while you have an active membership" which wrongfully made me believe that I am being charged on this account. 

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