Easylife rewards club - preying on the vulnerable

born_again

For reference on how to cancel.

For any enquiries about Clubs, please contact membership services.

By Phone:
0345 174 0503

By Email:
clubs@cs-support.co.uk

By Post:
Easylife Limited
Walbrook West
Queenborough Road
Sheerness, Kent.
ME12 3XT

Elsie_Air

I left a comment about my Mothers situation on this forum 8th September 2024. I was promised a full refund for £1076.44 which they had taken over the course of the previous 10 months. By providing them with a spreadsheet identifying every transaction date and amount, I can say that they have now refunded almost the entire amount. They refunded £1041.46. The difference was an odd amount which was the first amount in this whole sorry saga, and I believe this was a genuine purchase, so rightly they did not refund that amount.
I found you had to deal with the clubs side of easylife as easylife itself doesn't appear to be able to do anything relating to the clubs organisation.
I notice in a later post to mine that a different telephone number was provided for contacting the clubs organisation, the one I used was 0345 1740594 and the email address used was clubs@cs-support.co.uk.
If you deal with these people rather than using the easylife number I think you will stand a better chance of getting ALL of your money back.
Good luck to anyone else who has to deal with, what can only be described, as this 'theft'.

Silvertabby

I wonder if these 'bleeps' are using the trick of getting their victims to say 'yes' (usually when asked if they are Mrs X) and then splicing the 'yes' to a 'do you want to sign up to XYZ' recording?

Don't know who they were, but I took a call a couple of weeks ago from a chap who asked if I was Mrs X (my name).  I replied 'speaking'.  He then asked again if I was Mrs X, to which I replied 'this is she'.  Starting to sound frustrated, he said that he needed me to confirm my identity by saying 'yes'.

I said bollx, hung up and blocked the number.  

DullGreyGuy

Silvertabby said:

I wonder if these 'bleeps' are using the trick of getting their victims to say 'yes' (usually when asked if they are Mrs X) and then splicing the 'yes' to a 'do you want to sign up to XYZ' recording?

Don't know who they were, but I took a call a couple of weeks ago from a chap who asked if I was Mrs X (my name).  I replied 'speaking'.  He then asked again if I was Mrs X, to which I replied 'this is she'.  Starting to sound frustrated, he said that he needed me to confirm my identity by saying 'yes'.

I said bollx, hung up and blocked the number.  

Any evidence to back up your allegation of fraud or is it just libellous comments @Silvertabby?

No high tech wizardry required, basic training in telesales, list all the virtues of something and ask them if that sounds good to them/something they'd like, they say yes you say "great I'll sign you up then..." mentioning how they can cancel for free etc etc 

Never worked for these guys but did do a stint in outbound telesales. One of our colleagues was acting fraudulently by saying they'd send out a DD form  and just "let us know if you dont want it" however they were picking up the account details from another system and so setting up the DD rather than sending out a form. Even with that level of dishonesty their sales were only marginally above the other couple of us that had developed a strong patter (and most our customers were not elderly). 

Silvertabby

DullGreyGuy said:

Silvertabby said:

I wonder if these 'bleeps' are using the trick of getting their victims to say 'yes' (usually when asked if they are Mrs X) and then splicing the 'yes' to a 'do you want to sign up to XYZ' recording?

Don't know who they were, but I took a call a couple of weeks ago from a chap who asked if I was Mrs X (my name).  I replied 'speaking'.  He then asked again if I was Mrs X, to which I replied 'this is she'.  Starting to sound frustrated, he said that he needed me to confirm my identity by saying 'yes'.

I said bollx, hung up and blocked the number.  

Any evidence to back up your allegation of fraud or is it just libellous comments @Silvertabby?

Not libellous - I never said that my caller was from the company mentioned by previous posters - in fact, I said that I didn't know who had called me.

And I'm not the only one to have received a call like this - you only have to research 'scams'.

Not so much of an issue since we got new phones with a more effective call blocker system, but my standard response to dodgy sounding callers is to say 'bollx' and hang up.  (Apologies again to Vodaphone and British Gas....).

I'm not claiming to be totally immune but, thus far, I'm happy to report that I have never fallen victim to a phone scam.

melib4757

Unfortunately, I have just had my grandad round as he recently found monthly payments of £18.50 being debited from his bank account to Easy Life since December 2021. That's a grand total of £444 he has payed out and only just noticed as he never had any reason to check his bank statements until now due to being recently widowed.

At first, I thought maybe he signed up and had forgot, until I saw this thread! I cannot believe how many vulnerable adults have been scammed by this company. 

He phoned EasyLife to query the payments and asked to be refunded, which he was told to email in his bank statements and he would be reimbursed, I'm not hopeful he's actually going to get the money back... I have also asked for proof from the company to him signing up to this membership as my grandad is adamant he did not sign anything!

It's a shame that this is being allowed...

Anglishman

Elsie_Air said:

I left a comment about my Mothers situation on this forum 8th September 2024. I was promised a full refund for £1076.44 which they had taken over the course of the previous 10 months. By providing them with a spreadsheet identifying every transaction date and amount, I can say that they have now refunded almost the entire amount. They refunded £1041.46. The difference was an odd amount which was the first amount in this whole sorry saga, and I believe this was a genuine purchase, so rightly they did not refund that amount.
I found you had to deal with the clubs side of easylife as easylife itself doesn't appear to be able to do anything relating to the clubs organisation.
I notice in a later post to mine that a different telephone number was provided for contacting the clubs organisation, the one I used was 0345 1740594 and the email address used was clubs@cs-support.co.uk.
If you deal with these people rather than using the easylife number I think you will stand a better chance of getting ALL of your money back.
Good luck to anyone else who has to deal with, what can only be described, as this 'theft'.

This has been reassuringly excellent advice. I have proceeded exactly as recommended and received an email from Easylife promising a refund. The amount is over £1800, withdrawals for July 2024 alone exceeded £400 in 5 separate payments. The account is that of my elderly mother. On the phone I was told that she joined 5 clubs including ‘The puzzle book club’ (?), The motor club, The cooking club, The gardening club, which seems unlikely considering she doesn’t cook, drive (or own a car), or garden. I would recommend that people refrain from answering the phone using the word ‘yes’… if you catch my drift. 

Thank you Elsie. 

weasellywecognised

Well I won't say I'm pleased so many people have been taken in by this scam but it certainly makes me feel I'm in good company. I am Power of Attorney for an elderly friend of mine who has been taken in by this scam and unknowingly signed up to the Perx magazine earlier this year. Since then, £18.50 has been taken at various intervals and various times of the month and have just gone unnoticed until now when I have been going through his bank account as DWP messed up his pension recently so I was checking every little thing in fine detail. It's the familiar story, he bought something over the phone with Easylife in April this year and later that month the payments started to leave his account. 

When I called them, to be fair they immediately said they would cancel the 'subscription' and refund the last 6 months worth of payments, but those going back longer I would need to email them. I did this and they said they needed proof of PoA and having a login to Gov.uk was no good to them 'as it often doesn't work' and so they wanted a photo sending or a letter writing from my friend. I'm pushing this a bit more as I'm not sending confidential information to them about the PoA and I don't want to distress my friend any more by getting a letter signed by him. He spoke to them when I rang them and he authorised me to deal with it and they said they had put that note on his account. Now I'm having to chase them about it more. To be honest I'm just glad the bill hasn't racked up more as this could have gone unnoticed for longer if I hadn't had the DWP mess to clear up. So he is now owed two lots of £18.50 and I can see it's not going to be easy. Oh and you won't be surprised to hear that the magazines didn't turn up...

MadamGeneva

I have just embarked on this sad tale on behalf of my mother. We do not recognise several PODClubs 0345 174 transactions on her bank statement with a transaction type of DEB which the bank informs me involves the use of a DEBit card. First time through I cancelled the old debit card via the mobile app. No more transactions until a new debit card was issued after which further transactions appeared. As the new debit card has not been used by us since its issue, whoever is doing this must have sight of the debit card details other than ourselves! How???? I've now frozen the card and will attempt to report the fraud, but its not easy without a LPA!! Are there any MSE experts who can advise how to get around this Catch 22 situation? Why have the serious fraud office not been involved? 

moominyak

Found my way here after a relative had similar payments made from their account from 'PODCLUBS' with the 0345 phone number for The Book Club, thanks to Easylife, from whom they have unfortunately bought some tat recently.

I've emailed The Rewards Club with a copy of the LPA (figured that if they would use the online system to view it, they'd see the details in any event) so I'm hoping they'll refund the money back without too much ado.

In the meantime, the Rewards Club website is today showing this message:

"Public Notice

With effect from 29 November 2024 The Rewards Club Limited has stopped selling clubs. Benefits under existing club agreements will be honoured but no further payments in respect of renewals of existing club memberships will be taken and club memberships will come to an end at the end of the current payment periods."

Although 29th November is the exact date the payments were deducted from my relative's account - go figure!  But hopefully that message means that they have finally ceased this abhorrent practice - time will tell.

What I find extremely annoying / illogical is that the banks make the customer jump through many hoops / screens / warnings when trying to set up a legitimate payment to their family/friend/self, and yet will accept these fraudulent Continuous Payment Authority 'instructions' unquestioningly and without so much as a by-your-leave.

I don't know about other banks, but Barclays say that their customer needs to contact the retailer to cancel it - so not only have they willingly accepted a fraudulent instruction without any input/confirmation from their actual customer, but their customer then needs to go grovelling to the dodgy company to request that they cancel what should never have been set up in the first place!  Surely the customer should just be able to instruct their bank to cancel it, without the customer having to contact the bloody scammers.  Ridiculous.