Easylife rewards club - preying on the vulnerable

romich

This seems to be been an ongoing issue for some time how are they able to get away with it? i've only ordered one thing from them back in 2011, but they decided to charge me a membership fee of £65.50 a few days ago, I reported to my credit card company and although it says pending online they say it's been authorised.  I have two factor authentication and my Credit card company normally blocks unusual transactions, but didn't stop this one. Why I don't know. But they give the usual contact the company and if they don't refund I have to fill out a form to get the money back... So while this is going  through they have mine and many others monies sitting in their bank earning interest...  No wonder the UK is a hotbed for fraud.  I've tried calling Easylife but although advertised hours are until 6pm they close at 5pm...

kibopuppydog

Checking my credit card statements, I came across 3 transactions under "Easylife"
They were in May 24, Sept 23, June 23, totalling over £200.
I *NEVER* entertain any discussions if the are 'cold calls'
I would NEVER take out any subscription from a cold call.
I have NEVER knowing had any conversations with The Rewards Club.
I do have some calls that open with chatty comments, and if this happens, I get angry, shout at them, then end the call. Some of these may have been them, but I do not know.
I phoned Eastlife CS, and asked what these 3 debits were
Their immediate answer was, 'not us, you have only bought 2 things from us in the past, it must be The Rewards Club, I'll put you through to them'.

The Rewards Club said I must have taken these "subscriptions" out - I said no I didn't, and told them taking my money without my authorisation, constitutes FRAUD.

I asked for evidence of taking this out - they said it would have beenverbal over the phone.

So I said, 'calls are recorded, give me the script.

The conversation then changed direction, and they immediately agreed to refund all 3 transactions.

If I hadn't checked my statements and queried these, The Rewards Card would probably have continued to periodically take money out of my account, without my permission, nor my knowledge.
It's worth mentioning that at no point have I ever received any correspondence mentioning The Rewards Club, any such subscription info, nor any notification of the payments made, nor receipts for any payments - everything was done undercover.
There must be thousands of people who are being robbed of their money, without knowing it.
I reported this to my credit card provider, their Merchant Fraud Dept, but they weren't interested.
They told me if I was out of pocket, they would credit my account, but they do not take any action against the merchant - it's not their job to do this
So here we have financial fraud and theft, with the Bank, very much involved, and they're "not interested"!!
Then who is???
And here we have the 2 companies, both seemingly associated in this systematic fraud/theft, continuing their illegal activity, and getting away with god knows how much money, and anyone who twigs what is happening and queries the transactions, just get their money back (with a 'no harm done' smile and apology).
That's OK for them if so few people spot this, as the "rewards" for them must be huge.
.............. and no one, in a position of responsibility, cares, nor does anything about this !!!!!

Picklecombe

More of the same!
I now have Power of Attorney for a 94 year old cousin who is blind. She hasn’t looked at a bank statement for years. Now I see £18.50 a month has been going to EasyLife and N extra £39 this month to Rewards club. 

Stopping a Debit Card subscription is not easy so I have phoned Easy Life to get disentangled from them. They wouldn’t do it over the phone and asked for an email. My cousin would have no chance! 

thegreenone

Yep here too.  Husband bought a product and when they phoned he said "no cancel it" to the subscription.  He's 67 and perfectly with it.  We realised today that Rewards/EasyLife had still set a DD up and taken nearly £150 over two months.  He phoned the bank and they have refunded and cancelled his card.  A nuisance and annoying but seemed the quickest way to deal with it.

Dunaskin

They have been fined yet carry on, sometimes under different names - the Good Ideas website is part of the same outfit.  Scandalous.

Mumnstuff88

And again. My 91 yr old mum just found out that they’ve been taking money since 2022!!!! She’s bought some items but nothing that warrants £600+ ‘membership’ . Other recent fraud threw this up too- sooo angry! 
Has anyone got money back? 

Doobyloo

Do not go near this company. My husband purchased from Easylife, and the following month Perx took £18.50 from his account and continued to do so from 2022 to August 2024 when I discovered what was happening.  At the start of 2024 they must have decided that as £18.50 had gone unnoticed, they confidently started taking £18.50 twice a month!!

vazzer

Easylife are such a scum company. My mother in law was checking her bank statements and realised she was periodically getting a debit from her bank from Easylife. I rang yesterday to complain, because it was only within the last year or so that I had cancelled all communications from them. The guy I spoke to was quite nice, think he realised he couldn't scam me so agreed to refund and was very helpful. But in the background I could hear another agent literally shouting at her caller. I said to the man, 'blimey, dont you think about talking to me like that!', and he chuckled and said 'the caller isn't listening'. Given that Easylife is aimed at older folk I was utterly disgusted. My M-i-L could only be refunded back 6 months, so I have to email the 'club' to ask for earlier refund. The email address is quite difficult for a young savvy person to type out, let alone someones nan who might get the hyphen or dots in the wrong place.

Surely something can be done about this company. I have another friend who was being bombarded with magazines so she rang them pretending to be her sister and saying she had died. It was the only way she could stop the flow!!!

Elsie_Air

As with all the other posts, Easylife are a menace!
My mother is 97 and has slight dementia but is still able to manage her finances with a bit of on-line help from myself. I know she regularly checks her bank statements as she doesn't do on-line. I recently was checking her account for any unusual activity and became aware of several easylife payments. I reviewed her previous statements and went into shock! It started in December 2023 and every month the payments to easylife became more and more each month. in the months of June and July 2024 they took £216.17 each month! Mum was getting nothing for all of this money. 
What exacerbated this issue is that HSBC had stopped sending her paper statements, so she hadn't realised what was happening. I immediately rang the bank to report this as fraud and stopped any further monies from being taken out. I also rang Easylife and asked why they were taking all this money and they said that this was because she had joined multiple 'clubs'. I explained she would not have agreed to all of these 'clubs' and requested they re-imburse all transactions. Initially they explained they could only reimburse 6 months worth of payments and wanted me to provide them with all the dates and amounts. I did this via sending them a detailed spreadsheet with dates and amounts.
They were actually pretty prompt in replying by email, and are going to re-imburse everything. This amounts to £1076.44!
The monies have not arrived yet, but I expect them some time this coming week.
If you follow my actions then perhaps you can get everything re-imbursed if you or one, of your family members has been conned in this way.
I hope this gives you hope that this will work for you.
The email address I was told to use was: clubs@cs-support.co.uk which enabled me to get the refund.
Hope this helps!

aSmallCat

Fortunately we stopped this before anything could be taken, but my mum, 75, received a call from "The Book Club", which I found to be part of The Rewards Club and therefore EasyLife. She dismissed it as a scam, as she was sure she hadn't explicitly signed up to anything. However, a few days later she received a welcome letter in the post. She does have a habit of putting things off if she doesn't know what they are, so left it on the counter for a few days. There was a "cancellation form" on the back, but that relies on posting it. Had to read the small print in the T&C to find the cancellation procedure for other methods, and did so by email, telling them to just cancel and not follow up with any more calls.

Had a look through the EasyLife catalogue and most of the products can be found on Alibaba and similar sites. It's just predatory.