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

catsunited

Although I have got my £10 back from Shoppers Discount and Rewards I am still pretty livid about this con. Can we compile a list of companies that link to these scam merchants and give out our precious financial details presumably for financial reward. Can we then go onto recommendation sites and rubbish them - can anyone recommend any sites to start with. My evil company was Allposters.com.:mad:

marleyboy

Shopper_Discount wrote: »

Hello Forum Members:

We want you to know that we're here to help you. However, it's difficult to do that in a public forum when we don't know who each person is or the details of their membership. We can help you better and resolve your specific queries or concerns if you contact us directly. You can do so by calling our customer service team on 0808 234 1539 (free phone) or you can contact me directly at [EMAIL="consumeraffairs@shopperdiscountsandrewards.com"]consumeraffairs@shopperdiscountsandrewards.com[/EMAIL]. When you contact me, please reference this forum.

Thanks,
Mary
Consumer Affairs Team

I think we will stick to the customary WARN everyone else on a public forum than have to go to the trouble of contacting yourselves. Be sure to continue reading the majority of customers feelings regarding this SCAM, feel free to contribute your excuses and morals within this forum, best to keep it out in the open for all to see, than secretly discuss it with each individual on the hope that they might keep it discreet for you.

I think you already know the problem, save the private emails for the refunds NOT the justifications.

Michael_Graubart

I fell for Shopper Discounts & Rewards and their surreptitious signing-up for their £10-a-month accumulation scheme, too. In the UK, at any rate, I found, though, that if one telephones them, they will without argument cancel one's 'membership' and refund the last month's payment.

I also discovered, however, that after I insisted that by clicking something that merely asked if I wanted to receive a discount on a possible future purchase I was not agreeing to have them deduct money from my credit-card account every month, they agreed to refund all the money that they had drawn from my account since I made that one miserable little purchase.

I haven't actually received the refunds yet, but I live in hopes!

purplelavender

I, innocently, must have unknowingly signed up for this when I purchased some printer ink from Cartridge Monkey this week. Got a welcome letter from them today and saw at the bottom about the £10 a month payment. Like others before I had no idea there was a cost to this! Have just gone to their website, went to the Contact Us page and clicked on link to cancel benefit. Got a confirmation page with ref number. Hope this works!

ermanno

Be sure you can have all your money back, don't be fooled if they tell you that you have contractually agreed to take your money every month. That's what I did, I copy and paste a message I wrote in another forum:

One more story to add. I realised after 4 months that shopperdiscount were taking £10 a month from my account. Never authorised them, I called them immediately telling that if they don't give me my money back they would hear from my lawyer. The lady on the phone, Carly, told me that they will refund all my 40 pounds within next next 10 days. Let's see. Anyway, the trick is simple, totally ILLEGAL. It's obvious that these people need cashflow, they make you pay small amounts that pass unnoticed in your bank statements. When you discover them be sure that they'll try to tell you that you cannot have all your money back and that they will stop the future payment. THIS IS UNTRUE! I know what I'm talking about. Tell them to give you all the money back otherwise you'll sue them. Be sure they will pay, they know they are committing fraud. If they don't pay, even if it's only a few pounds, sue them. Actually, I exhort you all to sue them. That's what I'll do as soon as I have my £40 back. It was also an old account I don't use, so I went overdraft. If the bank will charge any fees, I'll tell them to pay them all. Don't be fooled, ask all your money back. And also, contact the website where you made your normal purchase (mine was petplanet) and tell them what their partner (shopperdiscount) is doing, not good advertisment for them!

And here is a letter I sent to petplanet:

"In October I ordered some cat food from you. I do a lot of shopping online, including pet food of course, and always buy whenever I see the best offers, which happened in one occasion so far with your company. However, because of something which has happened, I may cancel your company from the list of my favourite shops in the future. In November, until February, a company called Shopper Discounts and Rewards, P.O. Box 454, St Albans AL4 0YE, has debited £10 every month from my credit card. It appears, on researching their website, that I am said to have signed up to this monthly debit at some point and am now a "member". I would not knowingly have done so and, so far as I am concerned, I have not. I have certainly not knowingly authorised the £10 monthly debit from my card account. Especially with an account that I have only used in one single occasion, when I purchased the cat food through you. If I sign up for any monthly payment, I would use my other account which I use regularly. As a matter of fact, I went overdraft as I only had a few pounds in that account, the very few money I spent with it, was by purchasing the cat food with you.
Can you explain how this may have happened? My suspicion is that, somehow, my details have been passed to Shopper Discounts and Rewards by you. I'd imagine you will deny this, however you might not be aware that shopperdisounts may be able to access private data when the transaction is still open (namely, their pop-up window opens at the moment of purchase, so there might be some encrypted data that they might be able to access, such as my debit card). Be sure that I have never disclosed my debit card details, even less, have I ever authorised to take £10 every month from my account (the one I used only once with you, where there WAS very little money), for a non-service such as theirs. At most, I have signed up with a secondary email address (one that I only use for unimportant registrations) to receive their coupon. As it was through your company, I kind of trusted them, I never sign up with unknown companies, especially those that promise free products, huge discounts etc. I am a careful and experienced web surfer.
If you haven't done it yet, I strongly exhort you to contact this partner of yours and cancel any agreements you might have. Please be aware that I don't want any of my details to be disclosed to them (you can refer to this email, but not to who wrote it, I'm still waiting for all my money to be refunded, if they don't want my lawyer to contact them).
Be also aware that you'll find a lot of complaints online against shopper discount and their frauds.
Should there be any wrong development of the story (such as they don't pay me back my money, or delays whatsoever) I will intend to sue that company, in which case it might result in you having to provide convincing evidence that my debit card details have not been knowingly or unknowingly provided by you. I hope this won't be the case."

ermanno

And here is Petplanet reply. They have cancelled the partnership:

Hi Ermanno,

Thank you for your recent email regarding Shopper Discounts and Rewards. Further to your comments and emails we have had from a couple of other customer with similar experiences we have taken the decision to remove the programme with immediate effect from our website. Please accept my apologies for any inconvenience caused.

There are two ways in which the Shopper Discounts and Rewards can be implemented the first being that when a customer agrees to sign up to the programme there credit card details are sent automatically - we do not and have never used this method.
The second way and the method we use is that if a customer wishes to sign up to the programme then they must enter their credit card details again. We do not pass on any details to Shopper Discounts and Rewards directly without the customer signing up for the programme.

Once again please accept my apologies and should you wish any further clarification on this please do not hesitate to contact me.

Kind Regards
Kirsty

ermanno

Tuna Fish, glad you had all your money back, me too However, for the future, when anybody tells you it's your fault for not reading the small print, well that's a bulls... as they MUST make it clear in capital letters that they are going to take money from you. If there are lots of people who are conned by these people, there must be a reason. One person conned is one thing, but thousands of them means there's something wrong. There are laws and policies that regulate contracts, especially on the web there are more protections for the consumers. Spread the word! Take care

marleyboy

ermanno wrote: »

And here is Petplanet reply. They have cancelled the partnership:

Hi Ermanno,

Thank you for your recent email regarding Shopper Discounts and Rewards. Further to your comments and emails we have had from a couple of other customer with similar experiences we have taken the decision to remove the programme with immediate effect from our website. Please accept my apologies for any inconvenience caused.

There are two ways in which the Shopper Discounts and Rewards can be implemented the first being that when a customer agrees to sign up to the programme there credit card details are sent automatically - we do not and have never used this method.
The second way and the method we use is that if a customer wishes to sign up to the programme then they must enter their credit card details again. We do not pass on any details to Shopper Discounts and Rewards directly without the customer signing up for the programme.

Once again please accept my apologies and should you wish any further clarification on this please do not hesitate to contact me.

Kind Regards
Kirsty

That is excellent news and Thank you for supplying us with the email. I shall as a result remove Petplanet from my Wall of Shame, (which is growing day by day) of the companies subsequently involved either knowingly or unknowingly with this SCAM.

It has to be noted that for every 1 member of the public who have discovered these payments going out of their account, there's a thousand who have not yet noticed, and at least 50 who have accepted the "your not entitled to a full refund" Bullskit. In effect this company ARE creaming it in from all angles, no matter how many lucky one or twos get a full refund..... This charade MUST be BANNED completely!!!!!

thefenman

I also fell for this one, I am going to consider very carefully if I will ever use The Train Line again - you can use individual train companies after all and they don't charge £1 booking fee.

Once you have fallen for the Shopper Discount scam, you get drawn into what at first seems to be a separate organisation, My Time, but which turns out to be the same company. They were more up front about the tenner a month which alerted me.

I have to say I thought it was fishy offering seemingly endless cash-back on Train Line bookings.

I'm now off to my bank to make sure a block is put on all Direct Debits for which I have not set up any agreement.

Feel very foolish!

thefenman

It is The Train Line that is sharing bank information with these scam sites.

I have written to them as follows . . . .

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It has come to my notice that my having made a booking via your site, you have shared my bank account details with a site called "My Time" and that with this information they intend to take money for membership of their scheme (from which I am withdrawing).

I gave you no permission to do this, it is illegal and I am considering legal action against you to draw public attention to what is no less than a scam.

I will not be using your site again, I'll use individual rail company's own sites in future.

Shame on you for such underhandedness.

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