[TEXT DELETED BY FORUM TEAM] "Shopper Discount & Rewards"

geordie_ben

rosfox wrote: »

hi guys, i just got done by these guys, they say they don't have to give me a refund as I was informed of their 'conditions'
Any advise?
Thanks :mad:

Send this text to their email address:

"Shopper Discounts & Rewards

I rang your customer services this morning as money has been taken out of my account without authorisation

I was told on the phone these payments have stemmed from a purchase made to insert company

I would like my account with you to be cancelled, all details removed from your system and also all monies taken to be refunded

I know that you have to refund me my money by law

If my account is not cancelled and all monies returned within 28 days I will be taking legal action against you"

rosfox

Hey, it worked when I phoned up this morning, I was very polite very firm and clear that there was no way I was not getting a refund. He won't call it a refund but a 'goodwill gesture'! As soon as I mentioned this forum and trading standards, he went off to speak to his supervisor and hey presto!
I will spread the word and never ever except a cash back voucher again.:beer:

bonwitco

I too had the same problem. I only noticed yesterday when checking my credit card transactions, that this had been going on since October 2010!!!. I decided to email them last night. Below is the email trail. I think the composition of the note may have influenced their prompt reply? So you may be able to get a quick resolution by email if worded appropriately!

Sent to 'customerservice@shopperdiscountsandrewards.co.uk' on Tuesday 15-03-2011 20:21
Hi.

I would like you to refund my £60 which has been deducted from my credit card since October 2010 immediately. Please confirm receipt of this email and that this money will be refunded. Failure to refund this money will result in further action from my legal advisors.

Regards

FIRST RESPONSE FROM THEM from On Wednesday 16-03-2011 10:08



Dear Brian:

As you requested during a recent contact with our customer service team on 16/03/2011, your membership with Shopper Discounts & Rewards was cancelled and you were provided a refund of your last 3 charges. It is our understanding that you have asked for an additional refund.

If you would still like to seek an additional refund we request that you complete the claim form available on our web site Please print out a copy, complete all details and either fax or post it to us :

Shopper Discounts & Rewards, PO Box 450, Sevenoaks, TN13 9HN.

Fax: 01732 461560

To assist you in completing your claim form, your cancellation reference number is: 31643833

On receipt of your completed refund request form we will consider your claim and will respond to your refund request by email.

If you need any further assistance, please contact our Customer Contact Centre on our free phone number: 0800 731 9935 or by email at customer serviceand we will be happy to help you.

Sincerely,

The Shopper Discounts & Rewards Team.

MY RESPONSE at 12:53

Good afternoon

I cannot accept a partial refund of your charges. Please refund the remainder forthwith to avoid further action and consequent negative publicity of your questionable methods of business conduct. The amounts in question are miniscule compared to your annual turnover. Furthermore, the possible implications to your business in comparison make this a simple exercise to complete.

Again. Please confirm receipt of this email and your agreement to refund in full, all outstanding charges made on my account thus far indicating the total value and date of completion.

Yours sincerely

Good afternoon

THEIR RESPONSE (within 30 minutes) at 13:25

Dear Mr X

Thank you for contacting our customer service team with your enquiry about Shopper Discounts & Rewards. We are very sorry that you no longer wish to be a member of our programme. We will, of course, be cancelling your membership as you have requested and you will receive a refund of £60. This refund will appear as 6 credits of £10 each in your debit or credit card account within 10 working days.

We wish to assure you that we take the matter of data collection seriously. In your case, you entered your name, address, email address (then verified your email address), credit or debit card details and password (then verified your password) into the online form following your online transaction with Spotmau.com and gave us your consent to use the information used for your purchase by clicking a 'YES' button below the following language:

'By entering my password as my electronic signature and clicking 'YES', I have read and agree to the Terms of Service and Offer and Billing Details and authorise Shopper Discounts & Rewards to use my name, address and credit or debit card information I provided for billing and benefit processing. I understand the first 30 days of benefits are free and I will be billed £10 a month thereafter.'

Every day Shopper Discounts & Rewards members enjoy cash back savings with hundreds of top online retailers, along with other great benefits such as Best Price Guarantee Protection, Extended Warranty Protection and much more. Our professional customer service team respond quickly and efficiently to customer enquiries about the programme and its benefits. Additionally, customers can have their membership cancelled at any time if they no longer wish to remain in the programme.

Please find attached a copy of the page to which you responded and entered your details.

We would like to thank you for trying Shopper Discounts & Rewards and, once again, we are sorry that you no longer wish to remain a member. We hope that you feel this matter has been dealt with to your full satisfaction. Please do not hesitate to contact us again if you have any further queries on free phone 0800 731 9935 or via email at. XYZ. Our hours of operation are Monday-Friday 8am-8pm and Saturday 9am-4pm.



Sincerely,



XXXXX
305027
The Shopper Discounts & Rewards Team


This email is from Webloyalty International Limited ("Webloyalty"). Webloyalty is a limited company registered in England, company number 05922626 and its registered office is at Po Box 450, Tubs Hill House, London Road, Sevenoaks, Kent, TN13 1BL, United Kingdom.

theJudge

http://www.consumerfocus.org.uk/about-us/investigations/current-work

Brilliant news, I can add a footnote to my phishing site saying that "by entering your username and password you are authorising <my company> to access your account", then I just have to do a deal with consumer focus promising to pay back any money that I steal if any annoying person rumbles me, and bobs your uncle, I've gone straight. I love this country, it's a crooks paradise. If like me you like to steal money from people, remember to contribute some of your profits to the local political parties, so that we can keep this going for years.

marleyboy

Cheers thejudge, I have often wondered how this company has been getting away with this SCAM for Years, it seems they are covered by merely promising to refund anyone who discovers it.

I should add that it is actually illegal for any company to pass on a customers bank details to another company, however the majority of companies who deal with them, are completely unaware exactly what is going on, assured that a customer has to re-enter their bank details when signing up with SD&R. Such companies should do a test purchase on promotional "outsiders" they have linked on their websites.

A large proportion of reputable companies, from B&Q to Photobox, have since severed any ties with SD&R, as a direct result of exposure (mainly from the masses of unhappy customers who feel fleeced). ALL of which were assured a customer would have no other choice but to re-enter their bank details should they choose to become a member, indicating a customer is completely aware they have signed up, rather than simply clicking a "YES" button and allowing the "illegal" route of passing on a customers bank details.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/8566007.stm

theJudge

Send complaints to:- gemma.bowen@consumerfocus.org.uk, lisa.hawkins@consumerfocus.org.uk

This is the inflammatory email that I got from these so-called consumer protection regulators. As she's asking for complaints I feel this is the opportunity to oblige:-

"
I head up the investigations team at Consumer Focus and have been forwarded an email which you sent to our contact address followed by a further email. I also note that you have had a conversation with another member of the organisation.

Can I first reassure you that there is no question of Consumer Focus having done any kind of a “deal” with the company trading as Shopper Discounts & Rewards (SDR) nor do we endorse their business.

We were made aware of a series of complaints against the company from consumers who felt that they had unwittingly or unknowingly signed up to the discount scheme when making a purchase through another retailer, for example Interflora or the Trainline. This led us to contact SDR to raise those concerns.

Through a series of discussions, SDR made some further changes to their sign up process, which had already been substantially altered since the end of 2009. The changes included sending additional emails to consumers when they were nearing the end of their 30 day trial period.

I can see that many of the articles and links that you sent in your email to John Cottrill relate to complaints arising between 2008 – 2010. As we say, SDR have changed their sign up processes since this time. While this does not mean that we agree with their business model, our concern has been to ensure that consumers are given adequate opportunity to become aware of and if they wish to, agree to the terms being proposed when they make use of the discount voucher which then leads them to sign up to SDR. For those consumers who felt that they were not made aware of the sign up process, we facilitated the requests for refunds and made sure that consumers knew how to request a refund and that SDR knew how to respond.

If you have specific examples of any harm or loss which you consider to have been caused by Shoppers Discounts, we would be very interested to hear from you. We had understood that the sign up processes had been tightened up so that consumers were not signing up to the scheme in error. If this is not your recent experience, we would like to hear from you. We can then revisit this business model and where appropriate suggest either further alterations to SDR.

I am out of the office until Wednesday 23 March. If you can send me any information you have by email before that date, perhaps we could arrange to speak on my return.

I look forward to hearing from you.

Regards

Gemma Bowen

Gemma Bowen
Head of Consumer Focus Investigations

Consumer Focus
3rd Floor, Capital Tower
Greyfriars Road
Cardiff
CF10 3AG

Phone: 02920 787100 DD: 02920 787160
Fax: 02920 787101

gemma.bowen@consumerfocus.org.uk"

waterlord

Adaptive Affinity monitor these forums to monitor how many people are waking up to their scams and the actions people are taking against them.
They then fire off a standard template apologising for any inconveniece and stating that the only way you can join the scheme is by inputting your details to join the so called discount scheme,they also state that they send out an e mail with your membership details which surprise surprise they admit could end up in the spam folder and never be seen,how convenient.
WHY NOT DESIGN THE EMAIL SO IT GOES TO THE IN BOX? so the poor person who inadvertantly got duped into joining has time to act and cancel before the money comes out of their account.
Their parent company Vertrue has been subject to a class court action against them for their deceptive and unfair practices in America and have also been warned by the OFT in the UK in 2009 about their deceptive practices,for further info just google Adaptive Affinity or Vertrue and see how many complaints pop up.
As i say they can try to justify their actions by releasing pre prepared templates on to complaint forum sites but google them and get the facts.

theJudge

http://timeswv.com/business/x1637999206/Restore-Online-Shoppers-Confidence-Act-signed-into-law

The way to deal with these companies is to email the trusted merchants i.e. interflora, pizza hut, the trainline, ticketmaster, premier inn etc. that allowed this to happen to you, as well as Consumer Focus and your MP.

As the interviewed senator correctly observes "It’s something that government should be doing. We’re watching over things and catching people doing really bad things to people who can’t afford to have those things done to them.....Calling out people from reputable companies and making them testify in a formal setting has enormous effect...The power of embarrassment is very important"

In the US as a result of this legislation, "While Vertrue, Webloyalty and Affinion still exist, they have completely stopped their scams". Let's hope this will happen here too very soon.

Stormcooper_2

I discovered two payments for £10 two months running made by debit card off of my bank account. I googled Shoppersdiscount and the first option bought me here.

I called my bank who said that they could send a notice to stop payment, but could not refund the money and this would take 31 days...so another payment would go through in this time. I asked if there was anything more I could do? they gave me the shoppersdiscount phone number, so i tried it, got through first time and was told that when I signed up for £15 off my next Premier Inn stay, (this was in response to an email from Premier Inns) I signed up for this.

Had I known the cost I would not have signed up, so they offered to close the account from today and take no more money. This I did and got a cancellation email straight away!!!

An underhanded way to extract money out of people, If you don't check your statements....start now!!!

Moral to this story...There ain't no such thing as a free lunch!!!!!!

geordie_ben

Stormcooper wrote: »

I discovered two payments for £10 two months running made by debit card off of my bank account. I googled Shoppersdiscount and the first option bought me here.

I called my bank who said that they could send a notice to stop payment, but could not refund the money and this would take 31 days...so another payment would go through in this time. I asked if there was anything more I could do? they gave me the shoppersdiscount phone number, so i tried it, got through first time and was told that when I signed up for £15 off my next Premier Inn stay, (this was in response to an email from Premier Inns) I signed up for this.

Had I known the cost I would not have signed up, so they offered to close the account from today and take no more money. This I did and got a cancellation email straight away!!!

An underhanded way to extract money out of people, If you don't check your statements....start now!!!

Moral to this story...There ain't no such thing as a free lunch!!!!!!

Follow these steps and you'll get all your money back

geordie_ben wrote: »

Send this text to their email address:

"Shopper Discounts & Rewards

I rang your customer services this morning as money has been taken out of my account without authorisation

I was told on the phone these payments have stemmed from a purchase made to insert company

I would like my account with you to be cancelled, all details removed from your system and also all monies taken to be refunded

I know that you have to refund me my money by law

If my account is not cancelled and all monies returned within 28 days I will be taking legal action against you"