"Beware of ‘hidden’ monthly membership fee and other ‘extra’ charges.

I recently placed an online order from At-Cost.ca and was surprised to see an unexpected additional charge on my credit card. I looked in to it and found that ‘hidden’ (buried) in the site’s ‘terms & conditions’ is a monthly ‘club membership fee’ that I must of ‘agreed’ to by clicking that I agreed with the site’s terms & conditions so that my order could be processed. This fee was not directly obvious to me during the ordering process. I was tricked by what I consider a very poor business practice (which, in my opinion, shows less integrity on the company’s part than what I desire from companies I deal with, and perhaps even borders on scam); I was not pleased. I immediately cancelled my ‘club membership’ with this company.

At this time, I would not recommend this company to a friend, unless if the company’s terms and conditions change to eliminate the monthly fee, or at very least the company becomes much more up-front and obvious/transparent about the fee during the ordering process.

When completing the order, an additional percentage was added for selecting ‘credit card’ payment; I wish this had been stated before I registered on the site. They also added a handling fee in addition to the shipping fee that I hadn’t expected before registering on the site. They make their prices appear low before you register (for people who are price comparison shopping), then add fees that other resellers don’t add after you register. The illusion created is that they have lower prices than their competitors, when in fact, they may not. Had I known about all the additional fees in advance, I likely would have placed my order with a different company. From my perspective, this company was not fully transparent in their advertising practices.

On a positive note, the item that I ordered arrived as expected and the item was exactly as advertised. The company did a good job of responding to emails and processing my order quickly; however, didn’t seem to be available to answer their telephone.

A couple days after placing the At-Cost online order, my credit card got hit with hundreds of dollars of unauthorized/fraudulent charges. I have no idea if this had anything to do with placing my online order – it might have been totally unrelated. I cancelled my credit card as a result.

"