Japan Crate
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Be Cautious
FINAL UPDATE: In the end, it was my credit card company that erred when issuing the rebill. However, had Japan Crate been more responsive at first, it never would have been an issue to begin with. That said, the customer service manager that I dealt with these past several weeks was apologetic, sincere, quick to acknowledge the error, and - most of all - helpful. He did the hard work to provide me with the information that allowed me to pursue the case with my cc company - who was not so helpful it turns out - and when we had that all sorted, he was quick to deal with the fact that I had only receive one crate. While I have been dealing with this for more than two months, his effort, help, and honesty is why I am changing my rating from 1 to 3 stars. --- UPDATE: This has been a huge mess, and it took more than a month, and posting this review, and filing a complaint with the FTC before I was connected to a customer service manager - but I must say that the customer service manager I am working with now has 1) owned up to the mistakes made, which is honorable and uncommon these days, and 2) has, I believe, been genuinely working hard to get it sorted out. At this stage, it seems like my bank is actually the bigger obstacle to getting this settled. I have retitled the review, but I still recommend caution as it took over a month to get real help, I still have not gotten a refund (though this may have something to do with my bank), and I still have only received 1 of the 3 crates my brother ordered for us.The real bottom line - if you ever have to open a dispute, DO NOT close it! --- My brother, who is stationed in Okinawa, gave me, my parents, and my siblings each a 3-month gift subscription for Christmas. We thought it was a great gift, but... I am not going to really address how we only received one box and the effort we had to go through to get that. Nor that my sister, and youngest brother never received any of their crates and my parents, too, have only received two. There are plenty of reviews about their shipping procedures. My issue is that I had a gift subscription. It was supposed to run it’s course and then be done. I read all the fine print. In late March, though I had not yet received a crate, I did receive a renewal notice. I reached out to customer service and said, I didn’t think my subscription was supposed to renew because it was a gift, and then said - just to be sure - please do not renew it. Well, they charged my credit card $143.85 on March 26, 2022. (I am still unsure of how they had it or how they ran the charges with the wrong expiration date.) I had to reach out to customer service two more times before they responded and by then I had filed a dispute with my credit card company. I am trying to keep this somewhat brief so I will just say that it took days of back and forth before they even checked to see if my subscription had been set up as a gift. When they finally did, they saw it WAS in fact a gift subscription and said they would refund me, but they could not because of the “chargeback” - the credit I had received because of the open dispute - and I would need to cancel that. I then made the biggest mistake ever, knowing they get charged for a dispute and wanting to be nice, I cancelled it so they could refund me. Dumb, dumb, dumb! For a time they said they still couldn’t do it, then said they had, and it would post in 5-7 business days. I waited until day 8 and then informed them I had not received a refund. DAYS and DAYS of back and forth and “you need to work this out with your bank, our system shows we refunded you.” They sent me screen shots that "showed" I had been refunded, but the images had no dates, reference ID numbers or transaction numbers. In other words, nothing that could be tracked or verified. I called my bank - NO record of any refund attempt. Then they changed their story back to, "we can’t refund you because we didn’t receive the charges." So, I called my bank and asked to reopen the dispute - something I had been told I could do when I cancelled it. Well, dispute resolution found that Japan Crate had accepted the charges on April 7, 2022 and I needed to appeal to them to provide a refund. Seems simple, right? I have a letter stating they accepted the charges. The only problem - JAPAN CRATE WILL NOT RESPOND TO MY EMAILS. They are completely ignoring me now. I have been trying to get a response for a week. They have $143.85 of my money that they have NO right to - they have admitted this was their mistake - and they will not return it or even give me the courtesy of a response. Needless to say, I have escalated this with my credit card company. I have reached out to the Office of the Attorney General in my home state to see if I have any options there. I have reached out to the Office of Consumer Affairs and filed a complaint with the Federal Trade Commission.