Highcreditscore.co.uk & rewardsnow.co.uk [TEXT DELETED BY FORUM TEAM]

Brythonic

This outfit called highcredit score need to be investigated. Prior to responding to their offer of a free credit score for up to 10 days, I read the terms & conditions. Nothing about me signing up for a contract with a company called rewards today, even though it was advertised. I gave my bank details but when they then asked me for my home telephone number I decided to cancel. The cancel process was easy. There was a box that said cancel, so I clicked on the box & the page flashed off. To double check, I went back into the site to ensure I was not still a member & it stated I had no access.

2 weeks later £ 19.95 was debited from my account. I rang them but they told me I did not cancel the rewardsnow offer. I told them I did not agree to that offer & never got that far when processing the details. They told me nothing could be done other than cancel further payments. I told them they must have made a mistake. The guy on the phone denied they ever make mistakes. So I then emailed them with all details, my email was ignored. I told my bank the Cooperative. They also said there was nothing that could be done, which surprised me.

I was referred by my local Police to a department called Active Fraud. They have been very helpful & I hope to have my money refunded.

Fyffes

chantelle2333 wrote: »

lHas anyone actually received anything from this company or signed up knowingly?

I thought I'd have a look at what rewardsnow has to offer. Before today's mini investigation I had been concerned that the rewardsnow website was nothing but a front to a scam designed to gain access to people's bank accounts whilst walking the tightrope of legal/illegal practices. I had hoped that perhaps the website's prices were extremely competitive, thus reassuring me that the nature of their business is actually to make an honest profit from retailing and not scamming. So here's what I discovered.....

Firstly I noted that they describe themselves as "The home of retail discounts" so I decided to see if that was true.

First I had a look at the AEG cooker available from Rewardnow at £2189.99. You can get the same cooker from Redhill Appliances for £1525.00. Six of the seven companies I found were cheaper than rewardsnow. See here for proof:http://www.google.co.uk/products/catalog?q=aeg+c41029gm+range+cooker&um=1&ie=UTF-8&cid=13456175942118926669&sa=X&ei=u8BvTayADca1hAeZp8U1&ved=0CE8QgggwAQ#

Next I decided to look at the Nikon D7400 digital camera which appears at £2075.98 on rewardsnow's website. The same item is available on ebay for £1424.99. 32 out of 41 sellers are cheaper than rewardsnow. http://www.google.co.uk/products/catalog?hl=en&q=nikon+d700&cid=4292421098208405952&os=sellers#scoring=tps|start=0

Which means that if I was to purchase the two items from "The Home of Retail Discount" I would be paying £1315.98 more than I needed to. And don't forget, Rewardsnow would be charging me £19.95 per month for the privilege of paying well over the odds!!! :undecided

With this in mind I was surprised to see that Rewardsnow have stated the following on their homepage:

Why pay full price when all of the sales, discounts and savings can be found in one place.

Is this not a misleading statement? They are suggesting that they are cheaper than everywhere else and the fact that they claim that ALL of the sales, discounts and savings can be found on their website is clearly not true. How can they possibly claim that every single offer in the United Kingdom is on their website? LIES, LIES, LIES!

Here's what the OFT website has to say on such things:

What is a misleading advertisement?

An advert is misleading if it deceives or is likely to deceive its audience and affect their economic decision-making. This also applies if it harms or is likely to harm a competitor of the organisation placing the advertisement.

An advert will be likely to affect the economic decision-making of readers if, for example, it persuades them to part with money.

A misleading advertisement can be a spoken statement - eg, given by a sales representative, in person or over the phone. It does not have to be in writing.

An advert can be deceptive in various ways, for example, if it:

• contains a false statement of fact - this may be possible to prove or disprove by evidence
• conceals or leaves out important facts
• promises to do something but there is no intention of carrying it out
• creates a false impression, even if everything stated in it may be literally true.

Add this to the list of the carefully calculated acts of deception carried out by this company!

Brythonic

pinkshoes wrote: »

The payment is NOT unauthorised, because you signed up to the T&Cs, which you had to agree to before they'd allow you to use their service!!

It quite clearly states:



It also states you need to terminate the membership by writing to them or calling them.

This is quite clearly YOUR mistake, so perhaps you should take some responsibility for your action rather than trying to blame others and claim it's a scam.

You missed the point that some people have not explained clearly enough to you. This is deception. Why do they have a clearly marked box with the word " CANCEL " on the page, when clicking the cancel box does not end the agreement ? The cancel box clearly encourages people who change their mind to simply click on the box as opposed to phoning in, this is deception. The cancel box only terminates the free credit score offer & not the rest of the agreement, yet this is not stated in the terms and conditions.

Fyffes

Brythonic wrote: »

I told them they must have made a mistake. The guy on the phone denied they ever make mistakes.

Yet again, there is no offer of evidence to substantiate their claim that the've done nothing wrong. It's just another "cos we say so" response.

Keep at them. As chantelle pointed out, once they've run out of pathetic excuses and are tired of ducking awkward questions, they'll refund you.

And don't bother telephoning them. It costs you money and they can say what they like without fear of a repercussions on the phone. Keep everything in writing so you can show it to the police, trading standards etc. I'd contact Consumer Direct if I was you too
http://www.consumerdirect.gov.uk/contact?action=complain

chantelle2333

Brythonic wrote: »

The cancel box only terminates the free credit score offer & not the rest of the agreement, yet this is not stated in the terms and conditions.

surely this in itself makes that theft because despite what some people reading this thread may think we are not knowingly giving this company our money and it has nothing to do with reading or not reading terms and conditions. This company are using other companies websites and a front for a rewards scheme to take our money but at no point have we agreed to this and like brythonic said he tried to cancel because he wasn't happy with the details they wanted supplying but was still charged.

leereni

Apologies however I haven't read every post but gained the general gist of what has taken place. I posted a recent thread about match.com also doing a similar thing. It appears it is an easy way for companies to make me. Simple once they have your details and terms and conditions state it they will debit from your account automatically. Apparently according to some users/administrators of this forum we as consumers are supposed to read all the terms and conditions whenever by products or services. Well, if that was the case, people would hardly ever buy anything. I thought the consumer credit legislation was supposed to stop things like this happening.

SIMPLY, DON'T BUY ANYTHING ONLINE AND MAKE PEOPLE GET PROPER JOBS FOR DOING USEFUL THINGS FOR SOCIETY. IF I WANTED TO GIVE MONEY AWAY IT WOULD BE TO A CHARITY.

Fyffes

I think people are confused about what this issue is about here. Rewardsnow attach themselves like a leech to the end of the signing up process of an entirely different company. This is done very subtly in order to trick the customer into believing they are still entering details as part of the signing up process with the original company. Therefore, as the customer has read the terms and conditions of the original company, they presume there is no reason to do so for a second time.

Adaptive Affinity have been in trouble for this before with the OFT to whom they promised to make it more clear that a customer is signing up with them and not the original company. Despite their promise they ask customers to "re-enter" their email address. Why would you need to enter it again if this is the first point of contact? It's all part of a calculated plan to trick the customer into not realising they are now dealing with a second company.

So it's not just a case of people not reading terms and conditions. It's a case of people having no idea that there are a second set of terms and conditions that need to be read.

This disgusting technique is made infinitely worse when it becomes apparent that the original company is normally another branch of Adaptive Affinity specifically designed to lure you in. They are fully aware that virtually everyone will cancel their credit scoring service before the free trial ends, so this is their way of laying their hands on your money via the back door. It's a devious little plot which has been meticulously planned by shifty characters with the morals of a rat!

Fyffes

I wish rewardsnow would stop giving the old "sweet and innocent" act. It's painfully obvious what they're up to. I mean, do they honestly expect us to believe that rewardsnow would make a profit as a stand alone company?

Let's see what they actually do shall we. Well in a nutshell, the only thing they do is display the prices of certain items/products and services available from large companies such as Next, Comet, laura Ashley etc. Rewardsnow themselves offer absolutely no discount whatsoever on any item appearing on their website. All they do is show you the prices available from the big companies.

Why would anybody in their right mind willingly pay £19.95 per month for information which is readily available elsewhere for nothing. You have to go online to access rewardsnow so clearly everybody is capable of sourcing the best deal for themselves whilst online.

So if I wanted to purchase a fridge freezer today, I would have two choices:

1. Pay rewardsnow £19.95 to gain access to a fridge freezer from Comet for £150.00
2. Pay Comet £150.00 for the same fridge freezer.

Hmmm..............tricky one that isn't it?

Rewardsnow describe themselves as the "home to all of your favourite brands at a discounted price". They're not the home of anything they sell at all. The home of all the items on their website is at the merchant who supplies them. And I've noticed that many items appearing on their website aren't discounted at all. They're just the standard price. I'd say overall, that's another breach of the Trade Descriptions Act myself.

The whole thing is ridiculous. Nobody in their right mind would willingly pay for an absolutely pointless service like this. It's like me stopping a man in the high street, pointing at Comet store and telling him there's a microwave oven in there for £16.99. Then charging him £20.00 for the information even if he doesn't want a microwave.

If rewardsnow had put in some kind of effort to scour the internet for the cheapest available prices then they may be slightly justified in charging for their service. But they don't concern themselves with finding the best deals for their customers but simply take the lazy option of lifting information from a handfull of big companies.

And the reason their website is so uncompetitive and haphazardly thrown together is because they couldn't give two hoots about it's ability to generate a profit in a legitemate way. It's all a front for their real business of gaining access to people's bank accounts without them realising. The rewardsnow website is just there to keep the OFT and trading standards off their backs. Seems that if it looks like a legitimate company from the outside the OFT will unfortunately just let them carry on doing whatever they like.

r0br0y

hey a full refund after many questions and no answers.
i am now compiling a file for the oft, but i am more concerned with these thieves passing, or selling my details on to some other less than honest company.
i will be asking the oft how to go about this, i am sure that the offer of a full refund with no explanation of why they took it in the first place is an admission of guilt?
perhaps a copy of the emails to the police might get me an answer.
whatever happens i dont want these clowns getting away with this.

Brythonic

pinkshoes wrote: »

The payment is NOT unauthorised, because you signed up to the T&Cs, which you had to agree to before they'd allow you to use their service!!

It quite clearly states:



It also states you need to terminate the membership by writing to them or calling them.

This is quite clearly YOUR mistake, so perhaps you should take some responsibility for your action rather than trying to blame others and claim it's a scam.

On the advert it states all you need do is click on cancel. Read it !