Flooz

I ordered Flooz in the amount of $50 as a birthday gift for a relative. It was never delivered. I also added to separate amounts of $10 each to my own Flooz account. My credit card was charged, I paid the bill, but never received the Flooz gift for my relative. My understanding is that the company has folded.

I've lost $70, and had to buy my relative another gift. I've ended up spending twice the amount I would have for his birthday gift.

Janiera and others in this predicament should immediately contact their credit card issuer to dispute the charges.

Flooz is online currency spendable at various Internet shopping sites affiliated with Flooz. My brother sent a Christmas present last year for my kids, a total of $60.00. Frankly, I forgot that I had it until recently, when I returned from visiting family and found a letter in my mailbox from Flooz, advising me that my $60.00 credit was about to expire on January 1, 2001.

On January 1, about 8 p.m., I logged onto Flooz's website to check my account balance. It was $60.00, as expected. I proceeded (from their site, and with Flooz frames on my monitor) to another site to do some shopping. Internet service was slow that night, but my three kids finally found items that they wanted and I proceeded to the checkout page to pay for the items. The time was approximately 10:35.

I entered my Flooz account number, as requested, and received an error message stating that my Flooz account balance was zero. I clicked on the "customer care" logo on the Flooz frame and pulled up a page giving me a number to call for live help. I called, and the "customer care" representative informed me that my account balance expired at 10:26 p.m. -- less than ten minutes before.

When I pointed out that they had said that the account balance was set to expire on January 1, and that it was still January 1, she said there was nothing she could do and to call back the next day. I called back the next day and, long story short, got nothing except a lot of apologies. I talked to two "customer care" representatives and a supervisor, and was told "there's nothing we can do."

On top of that, I was told my forfeited money was NOT kept by the company, that they give it to charity. Yet, nowhere in their site or even their user agreement does it say this. I believe that they gave that to charity like I believe in Santa Claus. In researching this company, I find that the Better Business Bureau has seven complaints filed against this company, all in the last twelve months. Well, now they have eight, because I have filed one also.

My children were expecting to receive these gifts that they had chosen. They were very disappointed when I told them that we probably would not get them. My eight-year-old, especially, could not understand why this happened. Frankly, I don't know what to tell her.

We don't know either. Maybe she'd believe that Flooz operates on Newfoundland time?