If you are a new parent like me you probably scoured the web to get you and your new baby started with some free samples such as formula, diapers, soaps, bottles, whatever you could get your hands on. Here is a list for those that are interested in free offers you may have missed. Alright back to my point. Within all of the free offers there was “The Honest Company” that charged a fee for their free sample. This fee seemed harmless since it was only $5.95 shipping, so we decided to go for it and test these diapers out. Since we were signing up for so many it was easy to skip over fine print. Not our brightest moment, but honestly we thought a company with that name would be, well, honest. This unfortunately was not the case and we were charged just shy of $200 a month into our newborns life. A time when for most parents money is on a tight budget. Seeing a charge like this show up on your credit card statement will make anyone’s heart skip a beat. Including ours.

The company is well aware that people do not see the fine print that says “After your free trial, we’ll auto-enroll you into a convenient subscription.” and receive calls everyday regarding this. I know this because I asked while on the phone with a representative. However one thing to note is for Canadians there is also a surcharge that you might miss. Mainly because they don’t really mention it.

Act Fast and Get Your Money Back

So you ordered The Honest Company free trial and didn’t cancel. Now what? Now it’s time to get on the phone and call the company asap. Don’t wait, you need to get your money back before anything ships or you may be screwed. As soon as I saw the charge on my account I immediately called. They told me “Sorry there is nothing we can do it has already been shipped.” I eagerly spouted out my frustrations on the matter but received the same answer afterwards.

The feeling of panic set in and my only thought was how will I recover from this and be able to afford all of the expenses for the month. Panic really does set in when you are not sure if you can afford rent for a stupid little mistake.

After calming down a bit I called my boyfriend and asked if he could do anything to get our money back.

After going through the emails I had received and the account information he did notice a few things to bring up with the representative when he called. He then checked the tracking number to see if it was registered with the shipping company, which it hadn’t. He then called the honest company and asked if our order number had been shipped yet or not. Fortunately it hadn’t and that also got an employee on recording to say it had not been shipped yet(this is important as it will be part of your argument to get your money back. Here is their number if you are ready to call. 1.888.862.8818

Now to the call back for another representative. It is important to not been an asshole to the customer representative. He is just an employee and it is his job to keep the money the company has made, not give it away. Just be persistent and state your case.

The total time for our phone call was around 35 minutes so we will give you the gist of what went on.

First was to state that you were unaware you would be charged after signing up for the free trial. They will say it was in the fine print and you agreed to it. Well it was there but honestly they could of done a better job letting you know. Which is why I asked why they didn’t send a reminder and an invoice before actually charging our credit card. The representative said that they had sent an email that did exactly that. I quickly checked our email and spam/junk folder where I found nothing of the sort. I then asked for a transcript of this email to confirm it was actually sent from their end. Please note: they have these records if they sent the email, so don’t let them bullshit their way around this.

We then went on to ask why they could not just cancel the shipment and refund the money. He told us that it had already been shipped and he could not stop it. Now if you remember our previous call we had already confirmed that it had not shipped out. We informed him we had confirmation from his fellow employee that it had not been shipped and it was possible to cancel it. However he still wouldn’t, but I am sure if you push on this matter some more they might. We were in Canada so we were under more of a time crunch and didn’t have time to waste on this.

We then went on to talk about the surcharge that we did not understand and were also not warned about. The representative said it was clearly stated in the “Frequently Asked Questions” page. Yes it is actually on that page. However we were never told to go to see this page and read about it. Therefore they charged us a fee without telling us they would be charging us this fee.

After this we stated that not only were these practices dishonest but they were also illegal. We then asked for their legal departments information. The representative told us that he could not give us that information. We then asked who could and he quickly said that his manager could. Naturally, we asked for his manager and he then put us on hold for a few minutes. He then came back on the phone and said what we were waiting for the entire time. “We have refunded your account in full”

After 24 hours our account was refunded the money in full(minus a few dollars) and a massive weight was lifted off our shoulders.

We know a lot of people have fallen for this scam/trick/bullshit/dishonesty by The Honest Company and we hope you can all get your money back.

Please let us know if this helped or if you received your refund using a different method in the comment section below. So others can get their hard earned money back too!