SVB Avaliações 1

The SVB, Sociedade Vegetariana Brasileira, or The Brazilian Vegetarian Society, is the biggest vegan and vegetarian organisation in Brazil. And, they are also big scammers.

Last year I purchased a 1-year membership, which usually costs 180 BRL, but you can give more, and I decided to make a 500 BRL contribution, almost 3 times as much as the minimum required.

Then last week I received a spam message on my instant messaging app from the organisation claiming to have a "special" invitation for me. I had not been asked permission to receive any kind of adverts so I thought I'd go to their website to opt out. Turns out they don't have such an option on their website, but then I also found some terrible things about how they deal with their customers.

I noticed that my credit card was still on file and set for automatic renewal. I decided to cancel that as I prefer to have control of any future bills. Then I noticed something fishy: after I purchased my 1-year single payment membership last year, their system states I've been making monthly 41.66 BRL orders, even though I had paid in one fell swoop before. They weren't charging me again, and I'm not sure of the reason for this deception, but I know that in Brazil at least when receiving a salary, if you receive too much at once you pay more tax, so I guess what's going on is tax evasion. But I'm not an accountant.

In any case, I just carried on and cancelled the automatic renewal. As I did that, I instantly had my whole membership cancelled, my online SVB card disappeared, and the members-only section was blocked. This blew up my lid. My 1-year paid in advance membership that still had 6 months to run was automatically completely cancelled.

I then contacted the membership team and explained the problem. I said that that was theft and that no one else does this, if it's even legal. I mentioned that on the Google Play platform, even on free trial memberships you can cancel and still use the service up to the end of the period. I also mentioned the fraudulent-looking orders.

The lady replied that I wasn't being charged again and that the records were only shown that way because of how their accounting records worked. She also offered to have my membership reinstated and warn me before renewal so I could have control of it.

I then replied that I did not agree with how they displayed their records as it did not agree with reality and said it looked fraudulent. I also repeated that they should do it like everyone else like the Play Store. I also said I wouldn't want the membership if I was forced to keep automatic renewal, and even if they did that just for me I wouldn't want it because I wouldn't want it for anybody else and they had to fix their system.

She then doubled down on their fraud, and said she had to make an important correction for me: that it's standard practice on other platforms like Google Play and streaming services to cancel the service immediately upon membership cancellation. She also invented an excuse for how the unsolicited message was "special" but said she removed my number from the automated messages.

I repeated that no platform I know of does this: Google, Apple, Spotify, Disney, VPN providers. Literally no one has ever done this to me. That I have membership with The Vegan Society and they never did this either. I looked up Brazilian consumer law and got an explanation from Google Assistant that this isn't allowed unless there's a clause in the contract. I investigated their website and found no loyalty clause, only a mention in their Statute which says memberships can be cancelled if payments are late, but which was not the case as I had paid a full year.

I then suggested two solutions:
1. Get the IT team to update the system and stop cancellation of service on automatic renewal cancellation
2. Get the law team to write up a contract with a loyalty clause so they can keep doing what they're doing legally if at all possible

Next day she did not reply, so I'm posting this.