URGENT ADVICE PLEASE..is this illegal....

CM86_2

Another victim to this scam... 10 months @ £9.95...

E-mailed PR as recommended on another website, will let you know if it works.

We need to get :money: to look in to it....!!!

florey1981

Hi Guys,

Im new here today but have been keeping a eye on this thread for several months,

I first done a search on google for the vprewards as I didn't have a clue where the 9.95 payments were coming from, Anyhow... after finding this thread and finding the numbers I made 3 or 4 phone calls about the vprewards and 3 or 4 emails before they finally cancelled the membership that I didn't sign up for a refund my 6 payments of £9.95 ( this was over 3 months)

Now after checking my bank today they have decided to start taking payments for clubprem :mad: Called them again today and spoke with a rather rude woman she told me that i had signed up for the bla bla bla and I said i 100% did not tick any boxes!! but she said I did, so i then explained to her about the tons of people of here that have all had the same done to then and her words were "well they all can't read either":eek: She said they keep getting calls about it!!

WELL SORT IT OUT AND STOP SCAMMING PEOPLE IF THEY KNOW IT'S A PROBLEM!!




So what can we do about this ? who can we really complain to about it? obviously they are making money out of it, I bet there are tons of people out they not even noticing it or can't be bother to do anything,


Any ideas how we can get them to stop this?


Chris

florey1981

Im sure if enough people on here complain to watchdog something will be done ,

As above

http://www.bbc.co.uk/consumer/tv_and...ct_index.shtml


I Have emailed them and let them know about this thread

icky_2

Have just realised that I too have been scammed by VistaPrint. I bought some business cards a few months ago and have been billed monthly since then. Like many of you, I am certain that I did not agree to being part of VPrewards. Its not laziness or stupidity as some people have suggested - on the contrary I am careful to read what I am clicking on or not, and avoid schemes which sign you up to things like the plague. Its easy for VistaPrint to say we did agree because theres no documentation to prove it one way or another, alhtough the fact that I received no notification that I had been signed onto this scheme is a pretty damning indictment of their sharp business.

MBNA are going to call VistaPrint in the States this afternoon to cancel the direct debit and its quite clear that they deal with this problem all the time.

Last week I bought some more cards (unaware of the scam issue) and at the end of the transaction it says click for £10 off your next order. This takes you into 'Premiere Club' which will automatically debit your account, apparently after one month. Needless to say the process for getting your £10 back is tortuous at best, so I gave up on it, but then realised that I had been subscribed to premiere club even though I had not asked to be - they sent an email this time to confirm this. I have cancelled my 'membership' (which I was not asked to consent to in the first place) online and have an email confirming that. This is at least a little more upfront as scams go than what happened the first time.

I will be asking VP for my 'VPrewards' money back - I will let you know how I get on.

This does need some heavyweight (martin!) to investigate it.. VistaPrint advertise through all sorts of outlets, eg Amazon, and thousands of people must be caught up in it although many of them dont know it yet.

Icky

icky_2

The VistaPrint Website does feature the following info about their current reward scheme

http://www.vistaprint.co.uk/vp/help/NTRBilling.aspx

and this is pretty much what happens.. except you have to work out that you cant get your £10 'reward' until you have already had £9.95 taken off your account as your monthly membership to what they are currently calling 'premiere club'.

They still enrol you in the scheme when you click the link for the £10 off, without telling you that it will take money off you unless you cancel it.

This is sharp, but what they were doing before is worse, in that they didn't tell you that you were even enrolled, didn't give you a membership number or any evidence that you had (allegedly) been joined into the VPrewards scheme at all... and its pretty hard to get out of something you dont know you're in, without your (alleged) membership number and details.

I am saddened that some correspondents have simply accepted that they must have clicked on something, or didn't read the small print, just because they were told this by VistPrint. We all can make mistakes or overlook small print sometimes, but the sheer scale of this issue (check out the links posted in a previous mail) makes it clear what the real issue is here and its VistaPrints dodgy business. I shant use them again and I'm thinking about cancelling my credit card so that they cant suddenly start charging it again out of the blue even after they have cancelled the membership I never agreed to in the first place.

Gggrrrrrr

Icky

Hillards

Sometimes I wonder what people expect from life. I've been reading through this thread and am amazed at how many people do not read the information they are given on the screen when they place an order, do not check their bacnk accounts or query payments that have been taken out until months afterwards. :mad:

I'm sorry, but I have to disagree with most of the comments about this. I have used Vistaprint for many years now, originally for the 'free' business cards but more recently I have managed to get quite a lot of useful material for a community project I am involved with - all 'Free', but I agree that you have to watch out for the postage costs being tacked on - plus tax.

I have seen the rewards offer a few times, and have declined each time. I've never been charged for it, and I do check my bank statements carefully. If I remember, the box to sign up is already ticked - you had to UN tick it to prevent being signed up. Simple as that.

From what I've seen in these posts, Vistaprint are only too happy to cancel memberships and refund money. I can imagine that some of you have not been very tactful in your approach and started the conversation with their telephone reps by making demands and accusations, which is bound to get their back up.

If you do need to contact a company then be polite at all times, you'll get a lot further than if you threaten them with legal action - when it's your own fault in the first place for accepting something without checking what you were getting into.

Common Sense - two little words that can cover a lot of what I've been reading. Don't be too quick to grab what looks like a freebie without finding out what the hidden agenda is. Yes, a lot of companies hide things in the small print, or pre-tick certain boxes. If you miss that then you're hooked, but it's NOT illegal.

Follow up emails are also important. How many posts did I read where people said they had not read these as they looked like spam? If you've dealt with a company then they may send loads of offer information out, I get 3-4 a week from this company, but make sure it's not a confirmation that you've signed up for something you didn't really want.

Other people say that the email allows you to cancel within a certain time, which is standard practise, so make sure you do. :exclamati

If this lot were acting illegally then they would have been closed down long before now. I'm not condoning the fact that they don't make it very clear, and you have to un-tick the box, or whatever, but I cannot see the point of slagging a company off when it's clear that most of the people claiming they've been scammed have simply not looked after their own interests in the first place.

I've just received a package from Vistaprint today which contained 100 postcards, 50 large postcards, 10 large calendar magnets, 25 small magnets, 250 business cards, a rubber address stamp, a sticky note pad, a larger note pad and 10 note cards with envelopes. ALL of these were 'free', are to my specification, are printed correctly and I'm happy with the order. :laugh:

I''ve 140 address labels still to come from this order, which cost $3.99. On top of all this I have paid $16.51 for postage and $2.72 tax, a grand total of $23.22 - or about £12 in British money. It would cost that much for the rubber stamp alone if I bought locally.

Shall I pass on my own Money Saving tips for Vistaprint? Do I think people in this thread deserve to know how to use the system to YOUR advantage? I'm not sure about that but my top tip has to be to use the American, not UK, site. :idea:

It's not easy to do that as any attempt to log into vistaprint.com will take you to vistaprint.co.uk. So, how do you get round that? You need a link to the American offers, the very ones they send out by email to regular customers. I had one titled "Don’t Miss VistaPrint’s Biggest Sale Ever!" and simply clicked on one of those links to get at all the goodies I mentioned above.

The other top tip is NOT to order address labels in a large order, wait until you get to checkout and you will usually find that labels are offered at that point. You can complete your order with or without labels - check the prices, you may find that adding $3.99 worth of labels at this stage can reduce the 'postage' cost by over $10. :exclamati

I must have had hundreds of dollars worth of 'free' stuff from them - by paying a reasonable overall cost for postage and packing. It's knowing how to beat them at their own game that counts!

So - why was I looking at this thread in the first place? I'm a bit puzzled at their pricing policy. I've always assumed that buying more would result in a cheaper cost per item, but that's not so with Vistaprint.

They've launched a new range of pens - I had an offer to get one 'free', printed with my own logo and text, in the colour scheme I wanted, so it matches what I've had before. Great, apart from the 'postage' cost of course. Even so, a printed pen like that for about £2.50 is not too bad I guess.

The problems start when you look at quantities. I mentioned I get things for a community project, and these pens would have been great giveaways. Except for the costs - here's how it works out:
3 = $7.00 = 2.33 each
4 = $9.00 = 2.25 each
5 = $10.00 = 2.00 each
10 = $25.00 = 2.50 each
25 = $70.00 = 2.80 each
50 = $132.50 = 2.65 each
100 = $270.00 = 2.70 each
250 = $682.50 = 2.73 each

Erm? How can it be that they are only $2 each of you buy 5, yet buying 25 makes them $2.80 each, and so on? Yes, prices in US Dollars as I'm still on the American site.

Despite a link on the UK pages, you cannot send them email - all you get is a message back saying to call them by phone. If you phone they are not always able to answer the question, especially on a new range like these pens - so, look around the website for the Feedback link - and send them a message that way. Please don't abuse that by sending threats or non-feedback.

Let's hope some of the info I've given here will actually help others. If I worked for Vistaprint (which I don't) I would be pointing some of the messages in this thread at the legal team. Be careful of what you say, it could just as easily be used against you in a court of law! :T

icky_2

I guess the answer to the above is that many of us are human..

..we have off days, we dont check every credit card statement, we may be unwell for periods of time, we may have family or work problems which distract us from dealing with our financial affairs like Hilliard suggests we should do. Some of us are mere mortals, not demigods.

What is clear is that VistaPrint methods have caught a large number of people and they are anything but consumer friendly in doing this.. once you're been enrolled in VPrewards or any similar scheme, its funny that they dont remind you of this at every available moment like they do with their daily vistaprint emails. I wonder why they dont want to remind 'valued customers' that they're in this scheme? Its pretty clear what the motivation is.

My credit card company called VistaPrint in the US for me, they gave me my membership number and a UK phone number to call. That number (08450261100) was a message and gave another phone number to call - 08456722002 - that was on answer phone for quite a while but I eventually got a human reply, spoke nicely to the person there and asked for a refund. She offered 3 months refund (of 7 months actually taken) and cancelled my 'membership'.

I dont trust VistaPrint at all and will not deal with them again despite Hiliards eloquent and highlighted exaltation of their apparent virtues as s/he sees it. You should ask them for a job Hiliard, :T I'm sure they'd be happy to have someone with as much business savvy as you.

I'm not holding my breath that they will refund anything and as it was only agreed in a phonecall theres probably not much I can do to follow this up if they dont.

I'm so sorry to hear of so many people who lost money and had hassle and distress because of this. Painful, painful lessons ..I hope you can extricate yourselves and avoid anything like this again.

Icky

stugib

Hillards wrote: »

Sometimes I wonder what people expect from life. I've been reading through this thread and am amazed at how many people do not read the information they are given on the screen when they place an order, do not check their bacnk accounts or query payments that have been taken out until months afterwards. :mad:

I'd agree about people checking bank accounts - I've never understood how people can be so blasé about their money, but maybe they're not as anal as me

But there's so many reports of people signing up without knowing (both here and elsewhere on the web) that we must conclude the process is misleading, either by bad design or deliberately. I wonder where Vistaprint are registered because AFAIK there's fairly strict EU rules about inertia marketing meaning that tickbox must be unticked by default.

Regardless of whether they're following the rules or not it is understandable how people miss this - you are placing an order for a specific item, not signing up to be part of a club, and you don't expect to be signed up for things you know nothing about just for ordering something. It's one thing ticking a box by default to sign up for some spam email, quite another to have it ticked to start paying a 3rd party for something entirely different to what you're there for.

Let's be generous and assume this was never a deliberate ploy by Vistaprint - after all the people signing up by mistake they've had plenty of opportunity to correct it by now and have obviously chosen not to do so.

igglepiggle_3

angelatgraceland wrote: »

This happened to me also for 3 months-I was a bit hectic and hadnt checked my statements and one was late. I phoned vistaprint and explained that I had not clicked the box to join rewards etc etc. They were very understanding and refunded all of the payments. Ive not even had to pay for the cards I had ordered-a bit of a pain admittedly but speak to them nicely and I think they will sort it out for you. Here is the phone number.0800 028 8251. They are only open from until 1pm-5pm weekdays.

Same happened to me also. £9.95 appeared on credit card statement - was'nt aware i'd even signed up. Cancelled the membership, only to be billed again the following month! Sent numerous emails, with no response. Finally got through on the phone number after days of trying, and have been told the money will be credited back to my card.....fingers crossed!!

roo291

I recently ordered and received goods and recommended to my sister who sent me all sorts of links and went into a panic at what she had read. Confident that I read the small print I was feeling smug (like a few posters I might add!) but it seems that too many people are falling foul and I am concerned that U nay be fleeced. Will contact the bank but followed the link given previously http://www.vistaprint.co.uk/vp/help/NTRBilling.aspx and there seems to be a link to cancel?!? Received email confirmation so at least will have proof if there is a problem.