Tuesday, June 8, 2010

Fraud Alert: Med Shop Express

Just a blogpost for anyone who's considering using this website: www.medshopexpress.com, especially people like me who are ex-patriates who might want to get US brand medications shipped abroad. I ordered some diaper cream from them (zinc oxide seems to be regulated over here, so the highest concentration I can find is 15%, whereas Desitin has 40%) and was quoted $10.00 for shipping. Not bad. I authorized the purchase, and ended up being charged $34.00 for shipping. I even got an email with the $10.00 quoted in the invoice and the $34.00 in the actual charge.

The problem here is obvious, I didn't authorize that extra $24.00 so they can't just appropriate it from my account. If they want to charge that much for shipping, they need to show that on the screen where I give consent to charge my card.

What makes this situation infuriating is that when I contacted their customer support, the brainless agent I dealt with said, "$10.00 is the cost of domestic shipping and you need international shipping." See, the thing is, when I placed the order and got quoted the price, I had already input my London address. The site knew it was going international. It wasn't as if I input a US address and modified the order later. They have no excuse for not quoting me the price they would actually charge. In fact, I don't think any company ever has an excuse, not without making it quite clear that the price isn't fixed.

So I've reported them to my credit card company and to the FBI. Don't ever use them. I'd better win this one! It's just a matter of principle.

2 comments:

  1. I'm totally behind you!

    ReplyDelete
  2. Thank you! The charge cleared, so our dispute's been filed.

    ReplyDelete