Easylife Rewards Club Rant

philadollphia

I wondered if anyone else had been caught out like this?

My 84 year old aunt got an Easylife catalogue through the mail. She ordered a back brace by phone & gave them her debit card details.

This month when checking her bank statement, she found 2 amounts charged to her card - £69.95 & £79.95. Both charged by Easylife.

When she phoned Easylife they insisted she'd agreed over the phone to join their Rewards Club & that she should have received a rewards package.

My aunt may be elderly, but there's nothing wrong with her memory. She didn't agree to join the Rewards Club & she never received a rewards package.

Easylife have promised to refund 1 of the amounts within the next few days, but my aunt has to pay a fee of £2.95 for the privilege.

They're also sending her a letter which she has to sign, stating that she never received the rewards package. Only then will they refund the other charge - or so they say.

I've looked online & there appear to be other elderly people who've been scammed, but I can't find anything recent about them on these forums.

ValerieG

Yes, my elderly mother has just been charged the joining fee and really didn't understand what she was signing up to. She told the woman on the phone that she didn't want to join the club, but was pressurised into receiving the pack - three week free trial. I have tried to cancel on her behalf but they won't refund her money. I would like to take this further, my mother is a pensioner, slightly confused and housebound and certainly will not benefit from joining this "club".

agrinnall

Both of the victims of this should speak to their banks about doing a chargeback for the full amount.

SpammyTheSpammer

similar thing - "she'd agreed over the phone to join their Rewards Club"

Sorted it out after we got LPoA, togethether with a whole collection of payments to "charities", some of whom were most displeased that their DD's were stopped, so much so that they failed to honour the "do not contact" and made repeated attempts to get the payments reinstated. Not amused by any of this....

Browntoa

That always defeats the chuggers for me , "I'll donate £100 now if they never contact me again " to which they reply " oh , there's no option to remove that "

philadollphia

Just to let everyone know that my Aunt had one payment refunded by Easy Life.

She was getting the run around from Lloyds TSB, so I suggested that she went down to her local branch & made a fuss. They grudgingly sorted out the second payment & cancelled the DD.

lincroft1710

philadollphia wrote: »

She was getting the run around from Lloyds TSB

Which bank, Lloyds or TSB? TSB has been separate from Lloyds since its divestment in 2013.

philadollphia

Sorry for the long silence. It is, of course Lloyd's Bank. I must have been having a flashback!

They had refunded all my aunt's money, but are now saying that Easylife have a genuine claim. This means they're going to re-debit my aunt's a/c.

Lloyd's are telling her to phone Easylife to sort it out, so not much help there. She's been in a phone queue for half the morning & has now given up.

It makes me so cross that I can just Google Easylife to see loads of complaints about this scam, but Lloyd's apparently can't. My aunt doesn't even have a computer, so she just took the Easylife catalogue at face value.

Next time she's going to ask me to check out whoever she wants to order from.

JohnSmith121212

Here's how the whole thing works - The Rocket Marketing Group have set up 'loyalty clubs' on behalf of companies - these include the High Street TV VIP Club, Easy Life Rewards Club, The Big Savings Club and a load of others. When you purchase a product over the phone (or online if you give your phone number) from certain companies they work with (the most notable being Jacamo, check their 'clients' on their website to see others) you then receive a phone call from one of their many, many outbound sales employees - this can happen any time before delivery of the product. On this call they'll explain they're from the company you purchased the product from and are offering a 'free 21 day trial' to the loyalty club linked with the original company you've purchased from (confused yet? so are all the old people they call) - they then quickly explain that they want to send you a 'welcome pack' which comes with some 'free gifts' (these include three coupons you need to send off and wait at least 2 weeks to claim, generally a photoshoot for your pet or family) - the outbound agent will then VERY quickly read the part of the script that mentions that 'to cancel the membership you simply need to call us up and cancel it within 21 days' - now seeing as most of their clients are teleshopping companies, a huge portion of their customer base are housebound elderly and/or disabled people (can you guess where this is going yet?) - so now they've confused the heck out of the customer, convinced them they're going to receive a free gift and 'all they have to do is call and cancel it within 21 days' they ask for a 'verbal password to confirm you've understood everything i've said' - (note: the agents are taught that to make more sales it's good to talk about and reference the original product the customer bought, what this does is confuse the old people into thinking the call is to do with the product they bought, rather than some completely unrelated loyalty scheme) - so to recap so far, they've got some old person to agree to set up a free trial, receive some free gifts and 'confirm they've understood they need to cancel it otherwise a charge is made' all by asking for a verbal password - obviously these calls are recorded and this is how they legally get around it. So now the 'customer' has agreed to set up an opt-out membership and 'agreed' to be charged the annual membership fee after the 21 days unless they cancel (oh by the way, the annual membership fee is generally about £80) - all by giving a verbal password which most customers are confused about but do it anyway as they think they're agreeing to get their original product delivered.


So just call up and cancel it like they said, right? Wrong. To cancel it 9/10 they'll tell you that you have to send the welcome pack back (if you request a freepost envelope they'll send you one, but we were told we were NEVER allowed to offer these outright as they didn't want to have to pay for everyone, only to offer them if the customer was unhappy/angry, which they usually were.) So now you learn you have to send this pack back, which will cost at least 3 or 4 quid, within the stated time frame, or you'll be charged an annual membership fee of around £80. What they rely on is what most people do, especially the confused elderly, which is that the person on the 'free trial' will throw the welcome pack away, and if you've thrown it away? You're out of options, you have to pay. We're told if the customer gets very unhappy you can offer them a 50% refund but otherwise, there's nothing they can do. Obviously there's commission involved so all the people working for Rocket are brainwashed into doing what Rocket wants, in the hope they'll get a measly commission.

The dodgy nature is also backed up by the fact they urge all senior members of staff to review them as 5 start everywhere they can online.

redfox

Easylife_Group wrote: »

I am the Head of Compliance at Easylife Group[EMAIL="karen@easylifegroup.com"][/EMAIL]

You need MSE permission to post on behalf of a company. Your post has been reported as it is against the rules of the site.

tiamaria

I'm really worried about this, my 90 year old mum has signed up to this crowd, we dont' have a welcome pack to return either!