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

Fyffes

Sv03 wrote: »

i told them to explain to me if ive never heard of them how they think i wouldve enrolled with their company - the response was i 'must' have clicked on a £10 voucher and then i wouldve recieved a welcome email from them as i didnt cancel the membership from the email i was charged. my response to that was now tell me what legal proof they have of that happenin! he askin me what i see as legal proof - i said i want evidence of me clicking on a £10 asda voucher ( which he agreed ive never claimed) with the terms and conditions that i would be charged 19.95 a month for it and evidence of how they got my credit card details as well as ip addresses i did mention i didnt recieve the email and its likely it went into junk as thats exactly what it is - his response was we sent it s

Unfortunately they're likely to be less forthcoming with you because they've had twelve months worth of money from you and don't want to give it back. The phrase "like a dog with a bone" springs to mind. Sadly their business is set up nicely to make financial gains from people who don't regularly check their bank statements.

My guess is that they are playing a calculated game with you. At the first point of contact they refuse point blank to refund you the money in full but will eventually make you some sort of "goodwill" offer of a partial refund. They are banking on the fact that you will be so relieved and grateful to at least get some of your money back that you'll accept it and they'll keep the rest for doing absolutely nothing in return whatsoever. You should refuse this offer because you are surely entitled to a full refund if they can't/won't provide actual evidence of any enrolment with their company.

There's really no point speaking to them on the phone because they just say whatever they like and nothing can be proved. They could tell you they've kidnapped your granny if they wanted to but they'd just deny it further down the line. Plus you're paying for the cost of each call.

You have presumably made a formal request for the provision of electronic evidence which proves you clicked "I accept" on their Asda voucher page and also their evidence that they sent the welcome email and that you received it? I'd suggest following that up by asking them to put into writing their refusal to provide this information and their reasons for doing so.

As i've said previously, I'd love to be in court one day when a judge asks them if they have any evidence to substantiate the alleged enrollment and they reply with "Yes indeed. The customer must have clicked "I agree" and we did send a welcome email which they definately received". Let's face it, they'd be laughed out of the place if they tried that. It's not evidence at all. It's just some bloke talking utter crap.

I'm no legal mastermind but I'm guessing that saying "cos we say so" isn't within the parameters of the law. Which is exactly why they'll pay out well before they get anywhere near the stage where they may face legal proceedings.

You'll just have to keep at them I'm afraid. And make them aware that you're more than willing to take this all the way if you have to.

Sv03

thanks fyffes! i used your template letter and sent via recorded delivery they claimed they didnt recieve it. although i requested proof they gave me an explanation!! below their response and mine in red CAPS

> Thank you for your email received on 05 July 2011.
FYI A LETTER WAS SENT IN THE POST ON 01 JULY 2011, AT THE SAME TIME AN EMAIL WAS SENT THIS WAS FURTHER CHASED BY A FOLLOW UP EMAILS ON 05.07.2011
>
> Please be advised that we have not received any email correspondence from you prior to your email dated 05.07.2011 and also we have not received any letter from you.
I CONTACTED YOU VIA YOUR WEBSITE AND RECEIVED 2 CONFIRMATION EMAILS TO SAY THAT MY REQUESTS WILL BE DEALT WITH WITHIN 2 DAYS, THE LETTER WAS SENT VIA RECORDED DELIVERY PLEASE SEE ATTACHED SCREENSHOT OF ELECTRONIC PROOF OF DELIVERY.

> Please note that refunds are only offered on the company's discretion and at the time of your call
> call on 29.06.2011 you were offered a refund of 4months as a goodwill gesture which you declined, however I can now confirm that the refund of 4months has been processed on your behalf, please allow 7-10 working days for this to be credited to your account.
THANK YOU FOR OFFERING A MERE 4 MONTHS OF A REFUND HOWEVER I REQUEST A FULL REFUND AND WILL CONTINUE TO DO SO.
>
> Please find below an explanation of how you became enrolled in a membership with Rewards Now.
NOW THAT WE HAVE ACKNOWLEDGED THE FACT THAT REWARDS NOW DID ACTUALLY RECEIVE MY LETTER,WITH REFERENCE TO THIS PLEASE NOTE I DID NOT REQUEST AN 'EXPLANATION' ON HOW I BECAME ENROLLED IN A MEMBERSHIP I REQUESTED LEGAL PROOF
>
> Your membership record indicates that you agreed to an optional free 10 day trial membership with Rewards Now which is a rewards programme that offers you discounts from across the board of high street stores. By enrolling in the trial membership, you agreed and acknowledged that after the trial membership period, you would be billed £19.95 for the monthly programme fee.
> ONCE AGAIN PLEASE PROVIDE LEGAL PROOF OF THIS MYTHICAL MEMBERSHIP. I WOULD NOT AGREE TO SIGN UP TO REWARDS NOW FOR FREE LET ALONE FOR £19.95 A MONTH.
I WOULD ALSO LIKE PROOF OF HOW EXACTLY YOU OBTAINED MY CREDIT CARD DETAILS I UNDERSTAND AFTER RESEARCHING YOUR COMPANY YOU CONVENIENTLY OPERATE IN THE SAME BUILDING AS CREDIT SCORE MATTERS. IF YOU CLAIM TO OPERATE AS 2 DIFFERENT COMPANIES AT NO POINT WAS MY CREDIT CARD DETAILS PASSED TO REWARDS NOW - IF YOU RECIEVED THEM FROM CREDIT SCORE MATTERS THEN YOU ARE IN BREACH OF THE DATA PROTCETION ACT 1998.

ALONG WITH ASDA I WILL ALSO BE CONTACTING THE HIGH STREET STORE YOU HAVE ADVERTISED ON YOUR WEBSITE TO ASERTAIN ANY BUSINESS AGREEMENTS WITH THEM FEEDBACK FROM ONE COMPANY ALREADY INDICATES YOU ARE IN BREECH OF INFRINGMENT OF THEIR LOGO WHICH IS BEING INVESTIGATED.

> The offer for the Rewards Now service appeared after you became a member to Credit Score Matters offering an opportunity to claim a £10 Asda gift voucher as a welcome gift.
I ENROLLED WITH CREDIT SCORE MATTERS AND THE MEMBERSHIP WAS CANCELLED THE SAME DAY AS RECORDED BY YOURSELVES AT WHAT POINT DID ENROL WITH REWARDS NOW?' I HAVE NEVER CLAIMED A £10 ASDA VOUCHER. PLEASE NOTE THE APPEARANCE OF A 'ASDA VOUCHER' IS NOT LEGAL PROOF.
> To become a member you had to fill out our optional form, accept you have read the Terms & Conditions and submit the form. Without physically inputting and submitting your details there is no possibility of activating a membership.
ONCE AGAIN PLEASE PROVIDE LEGAL PROOF OF THIS
>
> Please note that you request for a full refund was declined and any further refunds request would be declined.
I WILL CONTINUE TO REQUEST A FULL REFUND - PLEASE PROVIDE LEGAL PROOF OF ENROLMENT
>
> If you have any queries now or in the future, please feel free to contact Rewards Now by telephone or email during normal office hours (Mon-Fri 9am-5pm) using the contact information provided below.
> PLEASE READ MY LETTER THOROUGHLY AND RESPOND AS REQESTED ONCE AGAIN I AWAIT A PROMPT RESPONSE.
>

Fyffes

Thanks for posting their response on here. It's always handy to know exactly how they're operating. Seems that not a lot has changed really. The majority of their reply is a copy and paste template they've used many times before.

Please be advised that we have not received any email correspondence from you prior to your email dated 05.07.2011 and also we have not received any letter from you.

This made me laugh out loud. On the one hand they're telling you that they sent you a welcome email which they consider to be suitable proof that you actually received it. And on the other hand they're telling you that they didn't receive any email from you and therefore you're a liar (even though you received their automated response email). :rotfl:

In short, they are claiming that 100% of their welcome emails are sent and arrive successfully with their customers but emails going the other way are prone to getting lost or the sender is telling porkies.

These people are an absolute joke!

To become a member you had to fill out our optional form, accept you have read the Terms & Conditions and submit the form. Without physically inputting and submitting your details there is no possibility of activating a membership.

Why (in their opinion) is there no possibility of activating a membership? How can they possibly make that statement without any explanation whatsoever? They really should have tagged a "because......." onto the end of that pathetic sentence.

You've done the right think by asking them to substantiate this but don't hold your breath on getting any response out of them other than "cos we say so".

This would be like the police refusing to provide DNA evidence for a murder trial and just turning up to say "he did it cos we say so your honour". And when the judge asks to see the DNA evidence, the police say "you can't see it but his DNA was at the scene and he wouldn't have been able to commit the murder without leaving it there".

Case dismissed!

I'm currently trying to look into the legality of this way of doing business and I've found some interesting stuff so far. I'll post my findings later if I can get my fragile head around it all.

Fyffes

Well I've been doing a bit of research into legal matters and it's all very complicated indeed. I'm well out of my depth with this and I'd appreciate some thoughts and constructive criticism on the latest template I've come up with below.

Basically, my understanding is that almost everything we do on the internet leaves some sort of electronic signature. Therefore, you'd think that a company such as rewardsnow would and should keep records of anything which they deem to be evidence of your acceptance of their terms and conditions. They themselves are keen to ram the alleged "welcome email" down your throats when you challenge them but they'll only send you a newly generated copy of a template email which proves absolutely nothing. I'm led to believe that they should have access to the original welcome email which would display the date and time it was sent. So why don't they just send a copy of that instead of saying "we sent it so you received it"?

Also, there seems to be a grey area in the laws which govern online agreements such as this. I believe that the solution lies either within the Electronic Communications Act 2000 or the Electronic Signatures Regulations 2002. Perhaps somebody with a legal background could have a look at these and help us out with some advice (it's well beyond my capabilities). What I do know is that simply claiming a membership was agreed to but refusing to provide proof is completely out of order.

Also, I know we also have a legal right to issue this company with a Subject Access Request which would force them to hand over everything they have on you. I issued a company with one of these a few years ago and it clearly caused them a lot of hassle. Cost me £10 and I received a pile of documentation 1 inch thick. Again, I'm not sure if this would result in them sending the information which they believe gives them the legal right to begin your membership and take your money, but it'd be interesting to see what the OFT and trading Standards make of them not including any such evidence in their response.

Ok so my latest effort is below. I would be sending this to them today if they owed me money (feel free to comment). It's important to get this right so we can back them into a corner and make sure they are no longer in any position to even attempt to negotiate a deal instead of making an instantaneous refund to their "customers". You will note that the general theme of this letter is to issue a veiled warning that you are going to make their lives very uncomfortable if they don't take the easy option of refunding your money.

If anybody is planning to send a letter to this company, they should post it via recorded delivery so that it doesn't get accidentally placed inside a shredder. If you're emailing them it might to be an idea to cc yourself (perhaps your alternative email address if you have one). This will then display the time and date stamp which makes it easy to prove you sent it and that it's highly unlikely the other recipient didn't receive it.

Rewardnow's email address is [EMAIL="contact@rewardsnow.co.uk"]contact@rewardsnow.co.uk[/EMAIL]

Their postal address is on the letter below.

---

YOUR NAME
YOUR ADDRESS
YOUR ACCOUNT NUMBER (if known)

Rewards Now
c/o Adaptive Affinity Limited
Cavendish House
369 Burnt Oak Broadway
Edgware
Middlesex
HA8 5AW

DATE XX/XX/2011

Dear Sir/Madam,

Re: Unauthorised withdrawal of funds.

I note that your company has taken the sum of £XX.XX from my bank account on (date/dates) . I believe that any such transaction was carried out without my express permission. I would therefore like to make the following requests:

• The provision of clarification as to the electronic process used by your company in order to establish (in your opinion) that I willingly accepted membership. Presumably you are reliant upon the use of an encrypted electronic signature? If so, I would like to request the provision of a copy of this information in accordance with the Electronic Communications Act 2000 and the Electronic Signatures Regulations 2002. If your intention is to claim that a membership cannot be activated without my acceptance of your terms and conditions, please be aware that any suggestion to effectively "take your word for it" will in no way be accepted as legally valid evidence. Any such statement should be accompanied by evidence which substantiates the claim.

• The provision of a copy any ORIGINAL "welcome email" which you may allege was sent to me by your company, complete with time and date stamp. I will not accept, as evidence, a generated template copy of this email which is devoid of an authentic time and date stamp. Furthermore, you should be aware that under no circumstances would the provision of a copy of a generic Asda voucher devoid of a valid time and date stamp be accepted as legitimate evidence of acceptance of your terms and conditions.

• The provision of details of any potential fee charged by your company in relation to a Subject Access Request made under the Data Protection Act 1998. I may wish to exercise my right to issue you with this request, although this is entirely dependant upon your response to this correspondence. You may be aware that your company is legally obliged to comply in full with any such request. According to the above mentioned Act, I am entitled to be told if any personal information is held about me and if it is, I should be given:

1. a copy of all information in permanent format
2. an explanation of any technical or complicated terms;
3. any information your company has about where you obtained your information from;
4. a description of the information, the purposes for processing the information and who the organisation is sharing the information with; and
5. the logic involved in any automated decisions

• I request the provision of a full a refund of £XX.XX to be made to my bank account with immediate effect as well as the receipt of a full written apology for the unnecessary inconvenience and stress caused to myself.

Please be aware that copies of all correspondence between myself and your company (and records of any failure to respond) will be made available to the relevant authorities and organisations should I deem it neccessary.

I look forward to your swift response.

Yours sincerely,

YOUR NAME

---

John_Pierpoint

Brilliant post. It is vital to stamp out "sharp practice" (you know what I really mean - Honi soit qui mal y pense - or if the cap fits wear it. - if this country is to regain its "my word is my bond" former reputation, and slow its descent towards third world business morality (sorry to insult the third world in this situation).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Honi_soit_qui_mal_y_pense

I wonder if you might reach a more "professional" audience if you posted something similar on a forum (say)
http://www.accountingweb.co.uk/
or something similar, if you can find it, on a legal web site.
No need to name names at his stage, we know many "firms" regularly Google their own identity. .

I was watching one of those "Dom Littlewood" investigations - one of the techniques he used was to produce an image of a web site as it had been when the ripped off customer signed up.

I stumbled upon this web site yesterday when checking out a new version of the boiler room scam. It tells you a fair bit about the web site (URL) you enter as it is now.

http://www.yandalo.com/

You will notice about half way down on the right, at the bottom of the column of useful information about the current web site information, there is another blue link.

This takes you through to a calendar giving historical snap shots of the the web site - scammers beware, we know where you have been.

You might be able to demonstrate sly changes in terms and conditions from the original (non) contract????.

John,

On the other hand you might not be able to - it seems to be an empty shell hosted somewhere in USA just to give the appearance of being a real trading company.?!!?

Fyffes

Thanks John.

I work for an online retailer myself and Yandalo is well off the mark with my company so I'm not sure how accurate it is on the whole. Your suggestion to put this matter to more legally specialised forum users is a good idea and I've done that today. I don't mind admitting that the legal intricacies are beyond me so hopefully someone somewhere will be able to tell me exactly which laws this company should be abiding by.

It makes my blood boil that they actually had the cheek to challenge a previous poster (Sv03) to define what he/she believes is actual evidence. I would like nothing more than to put everyone into the position where we can all accurately ask for the specific evidence relevant to the way this company do business.

No company should be allowed to hide behind a smokescreen when faced with a perfectly reasonable request for evidence of their right to take people's money. The fact that their standard response is effectively "take our word for it" is just beyond belief. It's time we dragged them out of their hidey hole and made them accountable for their actions.

Fazzer

I have read many of the responses about the 'Free' Quick Credit Score website and the rather tedious and tenuous claims that this is legitimate.

I think there needs to be reflection on what the average website user should be expected to understand.

The website is offering a free quick credit score. Not a £19.95 monthly shoppers reward service which by definition is ludicrous unless you are a millionaire and spend vast amounts of money each month. The sums do not add up.

I have looked at the openly advertised T&C for the credit score and there is a very small para that refers to other discounts.

It is unacceptable that the normal user is duped into such a subterfuge.

I subscribed to the service and at no stage was made aware in reasonable plain English that my card was being used for services other than the credit score. Yes I was aware that I needed to cancel the subscription to avoid a monthly fee on the credit score service.

I did cancel immediately, but I was unaware of the secondary service skilfully discrete service which did not even relate to my initial enquiry. The cancellation did not cover this surprise surprise!

Although QuickcreditScore is part of a Adaptive Affinity Limited, a company registered in England and Wales with company number 5493004, it is clear they need to use sneaky tactics to get you to subscribe to other services that are financially of no practical use to the customer.
Leading on from this and in general terms:

Folks the Internet/WWW is the modern day equivalent to the old Wild West of America. It is by and large lawless and open to massive abuse.

Credibility is almost assumed these days if a company has a website. Nothing could be further from the truth.

The legal situation with websites hosted all over the world is scary.

My advice to all users of websites is PLEASE PLEASE be careful and only send your details to well known trusted sources.

You don’t know who sits at the administration end of a website and extreme caution is needed at all times.

Sv03

more cr*p from them!!!

Thank you for your email received on 12 July 2011.

Unfortunately, your request for full a refund has been declined please also find attached all the information you requested.

We do not have the facility to capture your information when you first input your details into the registration form. The only information we can provide is a sample of the screen shot that was completed in order to activate your membership.

We have also received your letter and as you emailed and sent a letter we replied via email as that was the quickest way.

We have resent the screenshots your original welcome email and the terms & conditions.

Yours sincerely,

Fyffes

Do the screenshots have the time and date they were allegedly sent or are they bog standard templates?

Fazzer

Several things.

I am an experienced web manager and know about most of the back room activities that you would expect from websites that require T&C acceptance.

To start with here are two approaches to this. either a javascript code will disable the submit button unless it is ticked and or the web admin could be emailed or a flag placed in the website database.

Either way it is impossible to prove who the person was on the user end and is pretty much unenforcable. Electronic signatures are a clumsy tool and can only be upheld if there has been a complex registration process put in plcae such as Banks and the Government Gateway.

The problem here is most normal people do not have the resources to mount a legal challenge and the websites know it.

Why we ALL get turned into suckers on the www beats me!

"When people expect to get ‘something for nothing’ they are sure to be cheated".[1870 P. T. Barnum Struggles & Triumphs viii.]


With all tha said I think that the parent company needs investigating or at least flagging up to the authorities. Companies have a legal duty to act in a proper manner and not behave improperly.

I don't think it would take much to show that the activities promoted by Quick Credit Quote are misleading and improper.

It is not a matter of whether subscribers have been unreasonable careless, I think the numbers of people complaing about the rip off shows the website is at fault.

Rewards Now is a subsiduary of
Adaptive Affinity Limited (company number 5493004)
Cavendish House 369
Burnt Oak Broadway
Edgware
Middlesex
HA8 5AW

Thiis seems to be the best site to complain about them

http:// www. insolvency . gov. uk / complaintformcib.htm