About a month ago Linkedin.com invited me to try out their advertising network, LinkedIn DirectAds. They provided me with a $100 voucher to use, so I thought that I may as well give it a go. I was careful not to exceed the $100 on my account, so set up a campaign to cost no more than $10 a day and to last only 10 days.
I actually stopped the campaign early as it was not providing any useful leads so I thought I’d save my money. I now have $26.22 on my account.
However, LinkedIn.com have charged me $5 from my credit card. I obviously did not spot the part of agreement that says they will charge my credit card.
I have sent 2 emails to customer services in the last week, and had one response, which was:
“I apologize for not having a quick answer to your request about your ad. I have forwarded your message for additional review and advice. We will be in contact with you as quickly as possible.”
I asked them why my credit card had been charged when I still had money on my account. I then asked how I could remove my credit card details from their system as I do not want to be charged again. There is no way in Linkedin.com to cancel the adverts completely, you can just pause a campaign.
Others Caught Off Guard By Linkedin.com
I am not alone either. A quick Google reveals others that have been charged without giving permission.
BankingPearls, a Tweeter said:
“Linkedin offer me a $100 fee ads, trick me into signing up, charge me $5 and reneg on the coupon. Do not fall into this trap! 6:32 PM Dec 7th, 2010 via web”
So, at the time of writing, I still do not know why I have been charged once already by LinkedIn.com. Their customer services department also do not know why I have been charged. I have no way to remove my credit card information to prevent a further charge.
LinkedIn DirectAds Agreement
The agreement on their website states:
“If LinkedIn charges you an initial one-time fee, it will be applied toward your DirectAds account and automatically applied toward your future advertising fees.
Amounts you pay pursuant to the DirectAds service are non-refundable.”
However, there is no mention of this initial fee, and nothing to say that it will be taken from your credit card even if your Linked in account is in credit.
I may have to close my account, but then the only way to contact them is through the admin panel (at least the only way I am aware of) and I am concerned that if I close my account with Linkedin the charges could continue and I will have no way to stop them.
If anyone from Linkedin reads this, please provide some sort of clarification. I am ready to cancel my account complelely. I have several business contacts on Linkedin, but all of them I know via email. Facebook or real life, so it would be no loss. Planning to call my credit card company to get the fees refunded.
Update: Well, it seems that the warning was there, I just missed it. Remember, always check the small print.
Just reviewing the Linkedin DirectAds pages, and under “how much does it cost?” they say:
No mention of additional fees there.
Had a reply:
”
We charge a one-time activation fee for creating a DirectAds account. The fee is intended to cover the initial clicks or impressions that result after the ad is posted. Once the credit is depleted, you will be billed periodically for the additional clicks or impressions that your ad incurs.
Please note that fees will be assessed through the end date of the ad campaign or until you manually turn off your campaign through your DirectAds Dashboard; you can turn off your campaign at any time.
I have filed a ticket to have your credit card details removed. That process generally takes 10 to 15 business days. The ad account cannot be completely removed though. ”
Cheeky, as I did not see that $5 charge mentioned when I was given the $100 voucher.
At least they are removing my credit card details to prevent it happening again. Not an ideal solution, a refund would be better.
The first thing I noticed when reading my $ 100 voucher of advertising was “LinkedIn DirectAds customers are subject to a one-time $5 USD activation fee”. Did you not see or have this sent to you as part of the offer?
I assumed it would come off the balance. Makes no sense (other than to raise funds) to give someone a $100 voucher and then charge their credit card $5 for using the service. Why not just give a $95 voucher?
It is a way to verify the authenticity of the card being used. I have seen this happen many times. An example is using Skype etc. They do not start service until pre-paying for the service. I would look at the bigger picture. You are getting $95.00 of free credit to try advertising. If not happy with that then I advise creating a campaign and paying for it up front.
As noted previously, the $ 5.00 initial charge was clearly presented to me up front. I always make a habit of reading the terms and conditions of any service prior to signing up.
I was probably half asleep at the time. It’s only a fiver.
Although to confirm your credit card is real they can actually charge a much smaller amount. Anyway, I had actually forgotten about all this.
Hi guys…where do you get the $100 voucher from….I’m tempted to try linked in advertising for my eccomerce site but as it’s apparently very expensive i want to trial it first.
It came through as an offer last year, possibly when the Linkedin advertising was first launched. No idea if available to new Linkedin members.
I decided to run a 20$ per day campaign for 5 days, Linkedin provided no good leads and charged me 344$ without notifying me, restarting the campaign every 5 days without my knowledge or consent.
Be careful with those guys!
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Same thing happened to me last week. Their CPM and CPC is very High. While bing ads gave me 0.05 CPC, linkedin’s min is 2$ 🙁