Platforms silently enroll small businesses in paid advertising and then make refunds nearly impossible

Summary

An 82-year-old owner signed up for what he believed was a free Yelp business profile using his son's card; nearly $4,000 in advertising he never intended to buy was quietly charged over six months. When challenged, the company stonewalled by phone, forced an online form that only guarantees a one-month refund despite six months of charges, and never delivered the two promised manager callbacks. The user's only remaining options are a credit card dispute and possible legal action. This is a severe, largely unsolved pattern: free-tier signups silently converted to paid ad spend, no per-charge alerts, no plain-language proof of what was 'delivered', and cancellation/refund paths deliberately friction-filled. Small owners have no independent watchdog that watches vendor charges across Google/Yelp/Meta, flags silent upsells or phantom ad spend, generates a documented refund demand, and escalates before a chargeback is needed — costing them thousands and months of stress.