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

pokhim

10 months of £19.95. I didn't think to check my bank statements for quite sometime. I feel very silly for falling for this scam.

I checked out Adaptive Affinity financial statements. Turnover of £14m in 2010, director took a nice £225k salary. £199.95 of which is find and I fully intend to get back.

Ultimately my brother is a lawyer, and sister is a solicitor so I can get free advise and sue these people if I don't get all my cash back.

pokhim

Haha. Partial refund of £119.70. I sent them the following email. Athough it did have my work signature on there and I work for a bank so maybe that had some clout. I'm going for the remainder now. They took £199.50 account.


Dear Whomever it may concern,

I am using my work email as it is more convenient for me.

I am disappointment as I had been charged £199.95 in the last 10 months for something from Rewards Now. After further investigation I have discovered that many others have also been charged for a service they did not access.

I have been told that by clicking on a voucher for ASDA I had subscribed to Rewards Now (completely unbeknownst to me). I challenge you to provide evidence of me opening/clicking on this voucher. I would appreciate proof that I did click this button so that I can include this information in my complaint to the Office of Fair Trading. If you cannot provide this information I will have no option but to also report this fraudulent activity directly to the police in addition to my official complaint.

I have not received an email from you and I did not acknowledge or agree to be charged £19.95 per month.

I have no idea why you were regularly stealing this amount from my account and I am now demanding a full refund of the £199.95. I did not knowingly take up your membership and have no desire to continue with it!

I should also make it clear to you that my brother and sister are both lawyers are reviewing this fraudulent activity

I look forward to hearing from you soon.

pokhim

Here is the most recent email I sent. I hope they make the correct decision and refund me in full.


Dear Jermain,

I am still very unhappy and whilst I accept the partial refund I will not rest until I have received all of my funds back.

As you said, you have no proof of me clicking any such button, and I completely dispute that clicked that button or received any email from you, and as such your actions amount to theft. We both know who will win this claim in court.

Please either refund the full amount or I will report this fraudulent activity to the police and will have my lawyer contact Adaptive Affinity Ltd and Mr Andrew Millet, who I am sure you have heard of.

Your prompt response would be appreciated.

pokhim

Couple of responses but I got all £200 back.

Member ID: 808171691

Dear XXX

Thank you for your email received on 24 October 2011.
I would like to address the claims made in your previous email that Rewards Now is “A Scam Website”. As was explained in our prior correspondence.
Our records show that you agreed to an optional free 10 days 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.
The offer for the Rewards Now service appeared after you became a member to High Credit Score, and offered you the opportunity to claim a £10 Asda gift voucher as a welcome gift.
To become a member you had to confirm your email address, tick that you accept the terms and conditions and then submit your application by pressing the button provided. Without following these steps it is not possible to become a member.
A welcome e-mail was sent to the e-mail address you provided at the time of enrolment. This e-mail would have also explained the terms of the membership as well as the benefits you are entitled to.
We have provided you with all the information you needed in order to claim back the £10 Asda gift voucher offered as a joining gift and also to use the Rewards Now Services. If after receiving this information you have failed to cancel. We are not liable.

We will be refunding back a further 5 months refund of £99.75. This will bring the refunds issued to you for Rewards Now to a Full Refund. Please allow 7-10 working days for this amount to be credited back to your account.

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.

We are always happy to help and welcome the possibility of you subscribing to Rewards Now in the future.


Yours sincerely,



Darcy Jones
Customer Services
On behalf of Rewards Now


Dear Kofi,


I have already made my complaint to OFT.

I now demand from you proof that I signed up to receive your services. I have never heard of Rewardsnow and would never sign up to such a useless website.

I demand that you give me the refund as you have stole this money from my account without authorisation from me.

We both know very well that this is a scam website. I also know that your company has been warned in the past about your unfair and fraudulent treatment,

Please refund my account as soon as possible.

xxxx



Dear xxx

Thank you for your email.

The refunds my colleague quoted in his earlier correspondence ,£119.70, was credited back to your account/card on 19/10/2011.

This is at the discretion of the Company. So while I regret that you wish to pursue action with the Police we are not able to issue further refunds.

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.


Yours sincerely,


Kofi Lamptey
Customer Services
On behalf of Rewards Now



Dear Jermain,

Can I please have a response to my email and confirmation that the funds you stole from me will be returned to my account.

Best Regards,

Fyffes

pokhim wrote: »

To become a member you had to confirm your email address, tick that you accept the terms and conditions and then submit your application by pressing the button provided. Without following these steps it is not possible to become a member.

They must have been asked for evidence to back this up hundreds of times but once again have come up with a pathetic "cos we say so" response.

If this ended up in court, the proceedings would go as follows:

Rewardsnow "Your honour, the customer would not be able to become a member unless he confirmed his email address, ticked that he accepted our terms and conditions and pressed the button provided".

Judge "Do you actually have any evidence that the customer did any of these things?"

Rewardsnow "Ummmmm........no".

Judge "I'm sorry but did you just say you have no evidence?"

Rewardsnow "That's right your honour, we have absolutely no evidence whatsoever".

Judge "And why don't you have any evidence may I ask?"

Rewardsnow "Your honour, the customer would not be able to become a member unless he confirmed his email address, ticked that he accepted our terms and conditions and pressed the button provided".

Judge "Yes I heard you the first time, but where is your evidence that the customer actually did this?"

Rewardsnow "We don't keep records your honour".

Judge "Why on earth not?

Rewardsnow "Your honour, the customer would not be able to become a member unless he confirmed his email address, ticked that he accepted our terms and conditions and pressed the button provided".

Judge "is that all you can say?"

Rewardsnow "Your honour, the customer would not be able to become a member unless he confirmed his email address, ticked that he accepted our terms and conditions and pressed the button provided".

Judge "Do you realise that repeating the same thing without providing any evidence to back up your statement doesn't actually make it legally valid?

Rewardsnow "ummmmm.............the customer would not be able to become a member unless he confirmed his email address, ticked that he accepted our terms and conditions and pressed the button provided".

Judge "I've never seen anything like this in my life. Case dismissed"

Dontgivin

The Web is bristling with complaints about the practices employed by some of these companies. Putting terms in the small print does not mean the consumer has no legal leg to stand on when the charges are made. 'The Consumer Protection from Unfair Trading Regulations 2008' may apply to this sort of practice.

'A trader is guilty of an offence if he engages in a commercial practice which is misleading under regulation 5....'

5. 2(b)
'A commercial practice is misleading if it causes or is likely to cause the average consumer to take a transactional decision he would not have taken otherwise'.

Given the number of complaints on the web it could be argued that a good number of average people are not even aware they have made the decision! You having accepted the 'terms' does not mean the trader has met all their obligations to you under this act. This is called 'professional diligence' and it is an offence for a trader not to exercise professional diligence in their dealings with consumers.
We are talking the average consumer here note, not lawyers!

Anyone in this postion should ring their local trading standards and build the case against this practice.
Demand your money back under this act.
Ring Watchdog, Which magazine. Download the Regulations from 'legislation.gov.uk'. Make them earn what they have taken from you but don't give in.

Martin66_2

Has anyone noticed the opening responses on the beginning of this thread? Alot of 'Duh...what an idiot for falling for it' type replies?
Now it's become clear that this company and others operating from the same Edgeware address are clearly operating in a misleading, if not fraudulent way.
I noticed yesterday that I have had 6 x £19.95 taken from my account over 3 months by rewardsnow.co.uk and creditscorematters.co.uk. I had applied for a 'free trial' from one site and subsequently these 2 other sites have started taking money! I contacted my bank immediately and spoke with the fraud dept, who passed me on to the Retailer disputes department. They listened to me and immediately paid all the money back in to my account, and will refund any subsequent monies that they try and take while they challenge these 2 businesses to prove that I 'joined' their marvellous scams...they have no proof because I havent even heard of them let alone join them....

AnotherVictim_2

Hello all

My OH has just realised she's been stung by these crooks after using one of their credit report websites a few moths back.

Only after checking our bank statement at the weekend did we first hear about rewards now,in the meantime they have helped themselves to 4 x payments of £19.95.

I found this forum after doing a search and can't believe how many complaints there are about them,and that they have already been investingated for these dodgy practices in the past.

She phoned them today and was told she had automatically signed up to rewards now because she clicked on a £10 Asda voucher which she knows is untrue.

When asked for proof that she had actually clicked the voucher and also proof that she recieved an email notifying her of the trial and 20 quid a month payments was told that it would be emailed to her immediately.

'what a surprise' .... no emails from them in the last 4 hours or so.

Also got the generic excuse that the original email must have gone to her spam folder which to me is the pivotal part of this scam that allows them to keep taking monies while people are absolutely unaware.

The guy on the phone tried to tell her that because she had never visited the rewards now website before,it is the reason that the email would have been flagged as spam.
Would love to know how one is supposed to visit a website that they have never heard of let alone keep paying for it.
Never heard so much BS in my life.

Anyway they offered to refund her half of the money as a good will gesture but has told them that she will not accept anything but a full refund.

Proceedings are underway to take this further and refund or not I'm going to do my best to get these fraudsters stopped or at least more bad press/investigations.

fermi

----> OFT takes action against online subscription operator

OFT takes action against online subscription operator

135/11 13 December 2011

The OFT has taken action against Adaptive Affinity Limited to address concerns that some consumers were unwittingly signed up to online subscription schemes. In some cases people were incurring total monthly fees of almost £60. Tens of thousands of UK consumers are signed up to Adaptive Affinity Limited's schemes each month.

Adaptive Affinity Limited, the company behind QuickCreditScore, HighCreditScore, CreditScoreMatters, High Street Max, Rewards Now and Rewards First, has provided undertakings which prevent it from engaging in unfair practices or using unfair terms which could mislead people into signing up to subscription services which carry fees.

The OFT was concerned that some customers:

• believed the credit score service was free
• did not realise they had entered into a binding contract with Adaptive Affinity Limited and would incur a monthly charge if they did not cancel their subscription during the trial period
• thought they had supplied their credit card details for identification purposes to facilitate a credit check, and so were unaware that these details would be used to take monthly payments which ranged from £9.95 to £29.95 per scheme
• only discovered that they were being charged for a scheme or schemes when they saw the charges on their bank statements, sometimes after thinking that they had only entered details to claim a supermarket voucher or cashback discount.

Adaptive Affinity Limited fully cooperated with the OFT's investigation. The OFT has accepted comprehensive undertakings to address the full range of concerns identified.

Cavendish Elithorn, Senior Director of the OFT's Goods and Consumer Group, said:

'The OFT will take action to stop misleading business practices that develop online which leave shoppers out of pocket. Those that flout the rules risk enforcement action. We will continue to scrutinise the market to make sure that people have the confidence to use and receive the full benefit from the wide range of online services.'

NOTES

1. View the case closure summary for this investigation.
2. Undertakings under Part 8 of the Enterprise Act 2002 were given by Adaptive Affinity Limited and its director. The undertakings relate to alleged breaches of the Consumer Protection from Unfair Trading Regulations 2008 and the Unfair Terms in Consumer Contracts Regulations 1999.
3. Adaptive Affinity Limited has a registered office of Cavendish House, 369 Burnt Oak Broadway, Edgware, Middlesex, HA8 5AW. It describes itself as 'the market leader in post-transactional incremental-revenue online marketing' and has in excess of 150,000 UK members.
4. Under the Enterprise Act 2002 if these undertakings are breached the OFT can apply to the courts for an injunction, which, if disobeyed, could result in proceedings for contempt of court.
5. The Consumer Protection from Unfair Trading Regulations 2008 (CPRs) contain a general prohibition against unfair commercial practices and, in particular, prohibitions against misleading actions, misleading omissions and aggressive commercial practices. The Regulations are enforceable through the civil and criminal courts.
6. The Unfair Terms in Consumer Contracts Regulations 1999 (UTCCRs) apply to standard contract terms with consumers and protect consumers against unfair standard terms in contracts they make with traders. The OFT can take legal action to prevent the use of potentially unfair terms. A term is likely to be considered unfair if, contrary to the requirement of good faith, it causes a significant imbalance in the parties' rights and obligations under the contract, to the detriment of consumers. A consumer is not bound by a standard term in a contract with a trader if that term is unfair. Ultimately, only a court can decide whether a term is unfair.
7. The OFT previously secured undertakings from Adaptive Affinity Limited in 2009 which addressed concerns about customers being signed up to its shopping discount scheme subscriptions following purchases from third party websites. The current investigation looked at additional practices which Adaptive Affinity Limited had developed more recently, and the new undertakings address the full range of concerns identified. For further details about the 2009 investigation involving Adaptive Affinity Limited, see press release Online discount scheme agrees to change sign up process (24 June 2009).

John_Pierpoint

Alice in Wonderland and my taxes are paying for this?