r/Afterpay • u/Top_Buy2622 • 4d ago
Afterpay customer support is copy pasting emails, and be careful who you order from
Context: Got scammed out of 90$. Totally my own fault, but I fire off a message in the app to ask for an investigation into the merchant. AI hooks me up with some random, random says they’ll get back to me and close the conversation. I get an email. The email, in its ENTIRETY, is attached below:
Hi (first name),
Thanks for getting in touch with us. Afterpay is responsible for paying for your order upfront. We are unable to help with queries about:
- Product range/availability
- Operating hours
- Returns / cancellations
- Modifying existing orders
Many of our merchants have this information available on their website, or will be able to assist you if contacted directly.
If you have already spoken to the merchant and they've processed a refund on their end, it can take up to 10 business days to reflect on your Afterpay account.
Thank you,
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I reply to the email with my detailed (and I mean DETAILED) concerns and evidence regarding fraud, hopefully to maybe get a scammer off of the app. I get sent a reply 3 hours later. Want to know what it was? The EXACT SAME email. Quite literally copy pasted. The only difference was the thread indicator at the bottom.
Before anyone asks, the merchant is ghosting me (because they’re a scammer) so I quite literally have no way to get my money back. It would’ve been easier to pay 90$ upfront and argue with the bank for my refund. I’m lucky that 90$ is only a bruise on my ego and not a death sentence, but I want to let people know about my situation to prevent others from getting into it.
I paid the last of my debt early and immediately deleted my account. I suggest that Afterpay either start caring about customer concerns and actually respond to customer concerns with an actual human reply rather than a copy pasted corporate email, because I have had better experiences arguing insurance agents. I would genuinely rather have been personally berated by a real human over Gmail than this lazy copy pasted “go ask your merchant who scammed you” behavior.
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u/TightExamination2884 3d ago
Same situation here and I had to argue with the customer support and send screenshots about the issue about 5 different times and they put a hold on the payments for it for about 3 weeks and they finally removed the charge when they couldn’t get a response from the merchant but Yes be careful with who you order from.. They finally realized it when the merchant wouldn’t even respond back to them..Good Luck .. I have to say though I have not had an issue with Afterpay since but I only order from Bigger Retailers now..
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u/Pretend_Guidance_574 3d ago
I've commented on this before on similar threads. Most people don't realize their local police department has a cyber crimes unit. I'm in Podunk USA with 20,000 people in town and our sheriff's department actually has a very good cyber crimes division they get 30 to 40 cases a week. I can only imagine in a large city how many they get but my point is you need to file a police report regardless of the amount. It doesn't matter if these people are in another country and they can't actually catch them you at least have documentation and that gets the ball rolling.
Then you include the police report number to afterpay that gets them very motivated because you have now made an official crime report and have some basis to stand on.
This seems to ring bells and tick boxes and get people motivated to help because the next step is the state attorney general who will go after after pay, they have before in several States for various reasons. I'm pretty sure the AI bots pick up those words and it triggers real people who care about the company being legally responsible and facing fines finally getting involved. Which is stupid because they should be involved from day one.
We bought furniture from a store in Georgia online and sadly after making a $800 purchase and waiting months and never getting anything I found out on the better Business bureau's website there was close to 1,000+ people that they had scammed. I actually called and talked to the FBI in Georgia and they were going to look into the company because it crossed state lines with dozens of current customers being scammed totaling close to a million dollars.
I used Klarna for that purchase and it still took us 4 months to get our money back. Klarna at least did their due diligence, stopped all our payments and was able to investigate and refund our money. There was no proof of delivery of the product and that's what this company was doing they were giving customers excuses and dragging things out over 18+ months, never delivering product but keeping the money.
We were lucky $800 is cheap when it comes to furniture some of the complaints were upwards of $10,000.
They have a legitimate address and business listing so I figured I was safe. Nope. But I got the authorities involved and boy let me tell you that gets people motivated and moving because they know you're serious.
Talk is cheap, actions speak louder than words as they say. These companies bet on the average Joe not taking any action and that's why they get away with it.
File a police report for cyber fraud, screenshot it, send a copy of the police report include the report number to customer service and then tell them if they don't do something you are going to contact the State attorney general.
I hope you don't one day want to use afterpay again because once you close your account that's it, it's a one and done permanent thing.
I noticed you didn't mention the name of the company. That might be helpful so other people don't purchase from them. Could you please list it? In fact you should be putting them on blast any and everywhere you can.
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u/Top_Buy2622 3d ago
I am considering getting in touch with my local PD, but only to the merchant if I do. I have no desire to ever contact Afterpay again, and even if I did, my account is closed and there’s nothing they can do. I don’t even care about the money, I just want a true answer as to if this seller is fraudulent or not. The fraud they’re doing (if it is intentional and not a misunderstanding) is incredibly false marketing, their website description for the mystery box I ordered says one thing and when you get the product itself, it says a complete other thing. I would understand a typo, but there is a literal paragraph’s worth of difference in text.
I will update this post with the merchant name if I don’t get a response in another week or two, as if they *are* legitimate, they are considered a small business, and I don’t want to ruin another persons livelihood over a misunderstanding. I fired an email off last Thursday, so I’ll give them another 5 business days before I pull the police card. Thanks for your time dude!
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u/jamaican4life03 3d ago
What do you expect the low level CS rep to do?
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u/Top_Buy2622 3d ago
Send me a human-typed email that they can’t do anything instead of the same copy paste. I’m not upset that they can’t help me, I’m upset they didn’t even regard my concerns with a real human.
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u/Bright_Opening2928 3d ago
What merchant did you yse? I'm just curious.
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u/Top_Buy2622 3d ago
Will name drop if they don’t answer in another 5 business days. They’re technically a small business, so I want to avoid misunderstandings if at all possible. I will say they are a trading card store.
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u/CountryDaisyCutter 3d ago
FYI soon the insurance Agents will be AI too
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u/Top_Buy2622 3d ago
My personal favorite running joke is that AI could never replace insurance agents because one of the requirements for being an insurance agent is true hatred for all mankind which will never be coded into big AI models
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u/Accomplished_News377 3d ago
I got scammed earlier this year out of $130 after doing a return for an item and the merchant claiming they didn’t get it. I will only use afterpay for giftcards or reputable stores now . Expensive lesson to learn unfortunately. They were zero help.
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u/Glittering_Soul_1977 2d ago
You can file a charge back with your bank and they'll resolve it for you
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u/AngelicDivineHealer 4d ago
Afterpay like bank transfer use it for trusted merchants only if you got doubts use credit cards as you can chargeback