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Your Overture Non-Stop Acct: xyyyzzz is Now Offline
The email body said that balance was low and they couldn't charge your credit card. "Unfortunately, we were unable to add sufficient funds to your account to keep it online."
"As we were unable to replenish your account to cover future clickthroughs to your site, we have temporarily suspended interrupted your service."
To me, this indicates the account is offline. But they continued to send me clickthroughs and charged me for 6 months.
I said I am not paying as they said it was offline. They said if I want an account with them, I have to clear the balance.
Opinions please? I'm steaming here!
Jon
Oh yeah, Jon, you should probably start paying attention to YOUR CREDIT CARD BILLS!
I didn't recognize the line:
or until your credit card expires
...and it struck me (despite the fact that I'm not an attorney) that no attorney in his right mind would include such a limp, vague line within a legal document.
So, I went back to the excepts from the Overture TOS I posted earlier in this thread, and did a search for those words. Lo and behold, they weren't in there. But I thought, OK, maybe Jon went to the source, back to Overture, and actually read the whole document, a commendable thing to do... And so I went over to Overture and searched the full TOS for that phrase. Guess what? It's not there either!
Somebody PLEASE tell me I'm mistaken, that Jon did not indeed just misquote the TOS to suit his own purposes? It beggars belief.
Not all are over payment some are very similar to the your dispute, one that springs to mind - a firm placed a series of adverts with us, the last one they wished to cancel but wasnt for a variety of reasons.
They refused to pay, we took them to court - the judge ruled in our favour. His ruling was that they had received something and gained a benefit from it and therefore they had to pay up, having contracted to place these adverts they knew full well how to cancel them.
The one reoccuring theme through all of these cases was the other side considered themselves superior in their knowledge of contractual law, giving a defence that was based on what I call magical thinking. I.e answers given that are on the extreme side of reason and way off the mark.
If we are forced to go to court we hang draw and quarter the opposition.
Now you may wish to poopoo my postings, thats your right, however on WW the replys you receive are not always what you want to hear.
Lesson: Dont post if you cant accept other peoples point of view.
I belive that your behaviour towards Ov is wrong and you should pay.
For anyone who doubts the accuracy of what luckychucky claims is a lie on my part, just go to the UK Overtures TOC and read for yourself. Then you can see his true colours. Someone who cannot accept it when he is wrong as it crushes his fragile ego.
"and it struck me (despite the fact that I'm not an attorney) that no attorney in his right mind would include such a limp, vague line within a legal document."
You state in this thread that Overture will dot the I's and cross the T's regarding legal matters. Then you say that no attorney will include such as phrase.
Well they have included this phrase, as anyone here can verify within a couple of minutes (with the exception of luckychucky who becomes blind when it doesn't suit his weak case).
So which part of your contradiction do now want to modify?
Essex Boy: I agree that it is in no ones interest to go to court over such a small sum. Unless you really wanted to prove a point. As for posting, if you don't like the answers stay out of the thread. You are being hypocrytical. He who hath not sinned cast the first stone.
It has been pointed out to me with some force by luckychucky that I signed a contract and that is what counts. The contract says I shouldn't have to pay if my credit card expires. Are you saying that I should break the contract?
If the expiration date does pass, note that the terms do not state what happens in that situation. It does not state that your account will be closed or cancelled.
Overture have told you that the adverts were stopped. This is different from a closed or cancelled account. It still amazes me a bit that you never noticed any Overture emails or any tracking for visitors to your site (you do use tracking?) and that you did not specifically cancel the account after getting the stopped adverts email. You should have been building up a debt of £20/$20 per month - the minimum clickthrough - and this fee does apply whether your adverts are displayed or not and whether they can take that payment off the card or not. You have been lucky to be able to recover that money - many big organisations would not cancel that debt.
Perhaps Overture may blacklist you as an advertiser - especially if they find this thread (it would be simple for them to work out who you are). All other domains registered under your name and address could also be adversly affected. I hope you considered this prior to complaining to Overture?
This is a lesson to everyone - Overture may allow debts to run up if YOU do not cancel or close your account when you think adverts have stopped.
"Unless you discontinue your enrolment in this plan, you understand that this authorisation is valid until the termination of this Agreement with Overture or until your credit card expires."
It says it is valid *until* ...your credit card expires. Therefore it is not valid afterwards.
X is Y, until Z. Therefore, X can't equal Y after Z. It is simple logic.
Are you saying you expect a shop to be open after 6pm if they say open until 6pm?
"Unless you discontinue your enrolment in this plan, you understand that this authorisation is valid until the termination of this Agreement with Overture or until your credit card expires."It says it is valid *until* ...your credit card expires. Therefore it is not valid afterwards.
The authorisation in the terms refers to payment by credit card. Because your card expired, you have not authorised them to take any money from your card, which they have not.
But, you could run up a credit account if Overture permit you to do so. Perhaps the account has been reviewed by a human and put back online after the temporary pausing of the adverts due to a good history of payment? Maybe this person thought they were helping you if your card has expired - assuming that you would continue with a new card once you noticed that the account was using an invalid card? The terms do not state that they will never do this! It simply states that they will not take payment from the card on record. It does not state if they will accept payment in another way if they see fit.
Read between the lines in the terms, not just the terms themselves! (And Overture are not the only ones to do this kind of trick in their terms!).
It is important - have you now closed the account? In all of these disagreements you have not stated this. Overture may continue to run up your bill (on a credit account) - and the second time you complain, they may not be so willing to negotiate. You do owe them money even if your adverts are never shown as long as the account is open.
I do sympathise with you slightly - when you are told the account is offline, you assume it will remain offline unless you are told otherwise. Unfortunately, Overture have done something to either help you, or they have do something wrong. But to assume that debts will not run up without a quick double check does seem a bit negligent to me, especially as you have agreed to their terms (including minimum monthly charges).
Maybe if overture had written "expiry date" ...? but that is what they mean ...
Overture's policy is not to give you traffic once they cannot take money from your credit card. But they had a system error. So they erroneously sent me the traffic. They have admitted this.
In other words, they never put my account back online as they never took it offline in the first place! This is despite them sending me an email saying that my account was offline.
The point you make about running up a debt with Overture without them charging your card is a good point and one I have been considering at length. They have not charged my credit card (how could they, it had expired!) but they did run up a debt with them. When I signed up (mid-2002) there was no minimum £20 per month. My charges were about £12pm, nothing to me in the scheme of things. And therefore, even if they suspended traffic but kept the account open, I would owe them nothing. The £20 minimum monthly charge came in later.
I have been accused of negligence in not checking my credit card statements. But nothing was taken from them. Negligent from checking a small bill that was supposedly cancelled? Well, I have been far more negligent on other things. To me, you allocate your time where you make the most money. It is negligent NOT to do this! In an ideal world we would optimise everything, check everything. In the real world we try to allocate time where we best see fit.
Returning to the point of running up a debt...
"As we were unable to replenish your account to cover future clickthroughs to your site, we have temporarily suspended interrupted your service."
There was nothing to suggest I had a good history of payment. I just payed the initial minimum that everybody has to when signing up. So a human review would not have given any reason to change the status quo. And they have said it was a system error, not a human review.
I do not believe Overture have a case if the subject of their email is "Your Overture Non-Stop Acct: xyz is Now Offline" and then they don't take it offline.
"Unfortunately, we were unable to add sufficient funds to your account to keep it online."
Cause and effect. The cause: insufficient funds. The effect: traffic terminated. This statement in itself says that if you don't have sufficient funds in your account, you go offline. And if the status quo prevails, you stay offline.
My account with Overture is still open, re-credited with money and being used far more than before.
Leosghost: No confusion here - my credit card expired.
