Warning to Students/Researchers: HighBeam.com is a scam

I have always been very careful as to which sites I trust with my credit card. But unfortunately, working under stress to complete an assignment for my MBA, I gave out my CC number in order to signup for a 7 day trial account for the seemingly legit HighBeam.com. There was one article which was interested in and the site was preventing me from reading the rest without a membership. So I signed up, read the article, had the membership around for 2-3 days till I completed the assignment. Then I went ahead and canceled it. First time I tried, the site stopped responding. So, I refreshed the page went ahead and clicked on the Cancel Account button again. This time the site, logged me off and returned me to the general articles page. So, I assumed everything was fine.

Just yesterday, my Credit Card company called me up and informed me that HighBeam has billed me $199. I immediately informed them to block any other transactions from the card and went ahead and checked the account. And sure enough the account was active. They have not canceled the account, nor had they sent any emails informing the end of trial period was coming up. Worse yet, I have not received a mail informing me of the money they charged me. I have dealt with many companies over the Internet and it's standard practice of each to send out clear messages informing you before they proceed with routine billing.

A section of their help reads 'If you are not able to successfully use the online tool, please contact our 24-hour toll-free customer support line at 1-800-860-9227.' So they run this 'trial' acknowledging their online cancellation is failing at times?? Isn't that exactly why they should be sending emails before they bill trial users?

Little bit of Googling suggested that I'm not the only person who's been ripped off by this dodgy company.

http://www.ripoffreport.com/searchresults.asp?q5=highbeam

http://www.ripoffreport.com/searchresults.asp?q5=highbeam.com