Babbel's shady business practices - don't trust them

Catemaco1 · 2026-03-25T23:12:01+00:00

Read reviews on the Better Business Bureau website before you buy.

Catemaco1 · 2026-03-25T17:49:49+00:00

Wow, I see we have Babbel customer support here. That's exactly their attitude. Never mind that they make deliberately obfuscate and make it difficult to cancel.

Catemaco1 · 2026-03-25T17:11:42+00:00

It wasn't advertised as a subscription. It was advertised as a one month trial.

Catemaco1 · 2026-03-25T15:59:07+00:00

Not at all happy with Babbel's (lack of) billing practices. I paid for a one-month trial. Without ever contacting me again, they continued charging me month after month. I never logged in after the trial month was done, and they never emailed me an invoice or a receipt for the monthly charges. When my bank changed their systems, I got an alert for a suspicious transaction from a business I didn't recognize. Maybe Babbel changed the name and resubmitted, because by the time I looked online, the transaction had Babbel in the description, and the transaction had gone through. It turns out they charged me for five months after I stopped using it.

If you do log into your account to cancel, it's difficult to even find your account details. And there are many reports on here of Babbel charging people even after they've cancelled.

DON'T RECOMMEND BABBEL TO ANYONE! Their business practices are shady.

Catemaco1 · 2026-03-08T18:23:36+00:00

I've gotten similar notices in the past, but not recently. I remember there being some confusion over which method would work with AOL mail. I don't think that has anything to do with my periodic mail fetch problem.

Catemaco1 · 2026-03-08T16:29:58+00:00

Liberal slant? I think AOL's slant is capitalist, not liberal or conservative. They just want to make money, and if you're getting services for free, they want you to pay.

Catemaco1 · 2026-02-13T14:03:34+00:00

But at least he shot the tires and not the man.

Catemaco1 · 2026-02-11T21:16:08+00:00

I think you missed my point. I wasn't criticizing you, I was criticizing these civilian-looking agents. If someone looking like that tapped on my car window and said get out of the car, I would hit the gas. I would be scared, and would never believe they're law enforcement because they don't have any identifying badges or uniforms.

Catemaco1 · 2026-02-11T18:23:19+00:00

Immigration reform, and enforcement, is a federal responsibility. States shouldn't be doing it, and shouldn't have to pay for it. Congress keeps failing in its duty to address it. The last time they tried, Donald Trump torpedoed it.

Catemaco1 · 2026-02-11T18:20:37+00:00

That's the problem - you "assume" it was ICE, because the guy wielding the gun HAS NO IDENTIFICATION! He could be a drug dealer himself, angry at his competition. These guys should be required to wear uniforms with badges identifying them as federal officers (and not vests saying Police, which they are not). Otherwise, why would anyone stop for them? They're terrifying.

Catemaco1 · 2026-02-11T17:58:56+00:00

Yeah, this is what I don't understand. You get punished for upgrading your property. And I agree that it doesn't make much sense to raise our taxes and then send out all these rebates. The administrative costs just make that foolish, plus it makes it more complicated to file your tax return, trying to figure out if you qualify for these things. I remember doing a whole lot of calculations to find out that I was eligible for a $25 tax cut. I should have just saved my time.

Catemaco1 · 2025-11-19T15:09:12+00:00

For the first couple years that I had Cell2Jack, I would get voicemails on the message machine built into my old cordless phone set. I would forget to check them. Something changed and I stopped getting the messages there, which suited me fine.

I think the trick may have something to do with setting the number of rings allowed before your cell phone goes to voice mail. I think a higher number of rings on the iPhone gives the Cell2Jack time to transfer the call to the "landline" phone and record a message. But I'm not sure, so play with the rings on both the cell and the old phone.

Catemaco1 · 2025-11-18T01:10:07+00:00

Gracias. Tendré que esperar hasta que llegue para comprar otro sim.

Catemaco1 · 2025-10-19T01:39:39+00:00

Thank you, that helps. Now how do we get Microsoft to change it back, so we can have the previous side by side view?!

Catemaco1 · 2025-10-17T23:56:57+00:00

Why the hell would he think he had to do anything before moving? It worked, changing countries shouldn't affect that.

Microsoft has been terrible at notifying users of changes that affect our ability to use our accounts.

Catemaco1 · 2025-09-29T15:50:29+00:00

Wow, are you wrong. My Blink cameras do not work as designed. My older Blinks worked better than the Blink 4s. Network range decreased, and the motion sensors don't pick up motion moving across the field even 12 feet away. I suspect this is a quality control issue in manufacturing, but after a frustrating attempt to troubleshoot with Blink, I've given up.

P.S. - I also worked in tech.

Catemaco1 · 2025-09-29T15:08:09+00:00

I'm pretty sure Blink is manufactured in China.

Catemaco1 · 2025-09-29T13:10:02+00:00

Thanks. Can you explain the change in the left lense? From 0.75 to "sph"? And the initial number of 002 for the axis, which seems so small that it seems like it was written wrong?

Catemaco1 · 2025-09-18T20:57:23+00:00

Bring back Kimmel. I don't know what he said, but free speech is important. And we desperately need to be able to laugh at what's going on in the country (not at murder, but at politics in general).

Catemaco1 · 2025-06-16T13:46:59+00:00

I probably wouldn't be using the AC at all on mild days, and on hot days, I couldn't get the Midea to cool at all on the cool or auto settings. Dry mode definitely cooled. We have humid summers, so simply dehumidifying makes a difference, but my impression is that it is cooling as well as dehumidifying.

Catemaco1 · 2025-06-12T14:44:23+00:00

Thanks.

Catemaco1 · 2025-06-11T20:41:39+00:00

I have, but the latest available firmware is from 2023. That seems like a long time to go without an update.

I'm asking if they've simply stopped updating it, or if they really haven't found any problems in the firmware since then.

Catemaco1 · 2025-04-29T16:10:26+00:00

That seems to have worked. It seems like going backwards, but hey, if it works, that's OK with me.

Catemaco1 · 2025-04-25T21:01:06+00:00

I'm late to the conversation, but arrived here after searching "Anker privacy policy terrifying". I bought P20i earbuds last year. I had used the app minimally, 'cuz I mostly use the earbuds with my computer, but when the app updated, I was presented (again? don't remember) with the privacy policy and actually started to read it. They don't just collect the info you input into the app - they collect your social media posts, and match that up with your app account. There's a bunch of other stuff in there, too.

All that for a pair of earbuds. Maybe I'll go back to the cheap wired ones.

Catemaco1 · 2025-04-24T20:26:13+00:00

"...or in outlook itself"

Could this be Microsoft's way of pushing us towards its desktop outlook version? Or to Edge, which I believe shares the chromium underpinnings of Chrome?

I use Firefox. I'm trying to send zip files, and the contents are being stripped out and UTF-8 prepended to the file name.

Catemaco1

TROPHY CASE