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

pipps0316

So as the story goes, I sent the above letter (#730) to Pizza Hut Customer Services, I also emailed the same letter to the MD of Pizza Hut UK. I have received nothing back as yet from Pizza Hut but my email to the MD must have been forwarded to SD&R which prompted this reply:

Dear Mr xxxxxxx,

We were recently contacted by Pizza Hut with regards to your complaint about Shopper Discounts & Rewards. We are sorry that you were not satisfied with our offer and for any confusion that may have arisen over this matter. We have, of course, cancelled your membership as you requested and you will receive a refund of £20. This refund will appear as 2 separate credits of £10 each to your debit or credit card account within 10 working days.

We do try to make it clear that the promotional offer for an initial 30 day free trial to our online savings and discounts programme and £15 cash back voucher are offered by Shopper Discounts & Rewards, a partner of Pizza Hut. Our offer page opens in a separate window over the Pizza Hut order confirmation bearing our logo. We also refer to the £10 monthly membership fee throughout the offer page and all customers are sent a pre-billing notification 14 days before the end of their free trial period. We apologise if you do not feel these details were clear enough.

We wish to assure you that we take the matter of data collection seriously. In your case, you gave us your consent for Pizza Hut to transfer your data to us by entering and re-entering your email address and the last 4 digits of the debit or credit card you used when making a purchase at Pizza Hut's site and clicking a 'YES' button below the following language:

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

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

Every day, thousands of Shopper Discounts & Rewards members enjoy cash back savings of up to 20% with hundreds of top online retailers, along with other great benefits such as Best Price Guarantee Protection, Extended Warranty Protection and much more. Additionally members can claim a £10 monthly bonus for every month that they remain a member of the service and make a repeat purchase with our referring partner (in this case Pizza Hut). 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.

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.

Please note that although you have cancelled your membership with our service, you are still able to claim your £15 cash back cheque until 03/04/2010. You can do this by forwarding a proof of purchase from an order placed on or offline with Pizza Hut within the last 30 days to [EMAIL="cashback@shopperdiscountsandrewards.co.uk"]cashback@shopperdiscountsandrewards.co.uk[/EMAIL] .

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 [EMAIL="customerservice@shopperdiscountsandrewards.co.uk"]customerservice@shopperdiscountsandrewards.co.uk[/EMAIL]. Our hours of operation are Monday-Friday 8am-8pm and Saturday 9am-4pm.

Sincerely,

Jillian


So I have followed this email with an email direct to SD&R, see below:

To: Shopper Discounts & Rewards
C/O: Jens Hofma – Pizza Hut

Dear Jillian (305007)

Thank you for your email (originally sent to xxxxx[EMAIL="xxxxx@hotmail.co.uk"]@hotmail.co.uk[/EMAIL])

I appreciate you have cancelled my membership and will make a full refund of £20 to my account, however I feel that I should not have to go through the process of emails and letters to regain my money which I never knowingly gave ‘Shoppers Discounts & Rewards’ permission to withdraw from my account.

I would now request you supply me with the following documents:

• Copy confirmation of pre-billing email and read receipt of the concerned email.

I agree that when opting for the offer of cash back, you are taken from the Pizza Hut site to a new site which does bear the logo of ‘Shoppers Discounts & Rewards’ however it also bears the logo of Pizza Hut, which again can be very confusing and would lead the normal everyday customer to believe this is a Pizza Hut promotion run through ‘Shoppers Discounts & Rewards’.

Following the information you provided:

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

I totally disagree this was the advised information when agreeing to the promotional offer. I would also like to point out that the terms and conditions for the promotion are not made available on the first step of agreeing to the promotion.

Unfortunately the attached picture, suggesting the route I made when agreeing to the promotion was not the way I was directed to the site. I request you look in further detail at the way my promotional offer was executed.

It is now apparent to me that both Pizza Hut and ‘Shopper Discounts & Rewards’ have broken the following laws relating to the Data Protection Act 1998:

Part 6, Section 55 ‘Unlawful Obtaining etc. of Personal Data’, Subsections 1 (a,b), 4, 5 (a,b) and 6.

Due to this, I have passed all correspondences onto and made a formal complaint to the ICO, who in turn will be in contact with all parties concerned. Please note all future correspondences will be forwarded to the ICO.

I look forward to your quick response.

Yours truly,



So up till now no reply (yes calm down, I know it will take a day or two for a reply) but I am sure now these scammers (meaning both PH & SD&R) will know I mean business.

I will update you all as and when.

trisontana

Another name for the black list is the low-cost airline Wizz Air. Be warned!

marleyboy

pipps0316 wrote: »

So as the story goes, I sent the above letter (#730) to Pizza Hut Customer Services, I also emailed the same letter to the MD of Pizza Hut UK. I have received nothing back as yet from Pizza Hut but my email to the MD must have been forwarded to SD&R which prompted this reply:

Dear Mr xxxxxxx,

We were recently contacted by Pizza Hut with regards to your complaint about Shopper Discounts & Rewards. We are sorry that you were not satisfied with our offer and for any confusion that may have arisen over this matter. We have, of course, cancelled your membership as you requested and you will receive a refund of £20. This refund will appear as 2 separate credits of £10 each to your debit or credit card account within 10 working days.

We do try to make it clear that the promotional offer for an initial 30 day free trial to our online savings and discounts programme and £15 cash back voucher are offered by Shopper Discounts & Rewards, a partner of Pizza Hut. Our offer page opens in a separate window over the Pizza Hut order confirmation bearing our logo. We also refer to the £10 monthly membership fee throughout the offer page and all customers are sent a pre-billing notification 14 days before the end of their free trial period. We apologise if you do not feel these details were clear enough.

We wish to assure you that we take the matter of data collection seriously. In your case, you gave us your consent for Pizza Hut to transfer your data to us by entering and re-entering your email address and the last 4 digits of the debit or credit card you used when making a purchase at Pizza Hut's site and clicking a 'YES' button below the following language:

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

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

Every day, thousands of Shopper Discounts & Rewards members enjoy cash back savings of up to 20% with hundreds of top online retailers, along with other great benefits such as Best Price Guarantee Protection, Extended Warranty Protection and much more. Additionally members can claim a £10 monthly bonus for every month that they remain a member of the service and make a repeat purchase with our referring partner (in this case Pizza Hut). 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.

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.

Please note that although you have cancelled your membership with our service, you are still able to claim your £15 cash back cheque until 03/04/2010. You can do this by forwarding a proof of purchase from an order placed on or offline with Pizza Hut within the last 30 days to [EMAIL="cashback@shopperdiscountsandrewards.co.uk"]cashback@shopperdiscountsandrewards.co.uk[/EMAIL] .

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 [EMAIL="customerservice@shopperdiscountsandrewards.co.uk"]customerservice@shopperdiscountsandrewards.co.uk[/EMAIL]. Our hours of operation are Monday-Friday 8am-8pm and Saturday 9am-4pm.

Sincerely,

Jillian


So I have followed this email with an email direct to SD&R, see below:

To: Shopper Discounts & Rewards
C/O: Jens Hofma – Pizza Hut

Dear Jillian (305007)

Thank you for your email (originally sent to xxxxx[EMAIL="xxxxx@hotmail.co.uk"]@hotmail.co.uk[/EMAIL])

I appreciate you have cancelled my membership and will make a full refund of £20 to my account, however I feel that I should not have to go through the process of emails and letters to regain my money which I never knowingly gave ‘Shoppers Discounts & Rewards’ permission to withdraw from my account.

I would now request you supply me with the following documents:

• Copy confirmation of pre-billing email and read receipt of the concerned email.

I agree that when opting for the offer of cash back, you are taken from the Pizza Hut site to a new site which does bear the logo of ‘Shoppers Discounts & Rewards’ however it also bears the logo of Pizza Hut, which again can be very confusing and would lead the normal everyday customer to believe this is a Pizza Hut promotion run through ‘Shoppers Discounts & Rewards’.

Following the information you provided:

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

I totally disagree this was the advised information when agreeing to the promotional offer. I would also like to point out that the terms and conditions for the promotion are not made available on the first step of agreeing to the promotion.

Unfortunately the attached picture, suggesting the route I made when agreeing to the promotion was not the way I was directed to the site. I request you look in further detail at the way my promotional offer was executed.

It is now apparent to me that both Pizza Hut and ‘Shopper Discounts & Rewards’ have broken the following laws relating to the Data Protection Act 1998:

Part 6, Section 55 ‘Unlawful Obtaining etc. of Personal Data’, Subsections 1 (a,b), 4, 5 (a,b) and 6.

Due to this, I have passed all correspondences onto and made a formal complaint to the ICO, who in turn will be in contact with all parties concerned. Please note all future correspondences will be forwarded to the ICO.

I look forward to your quick response.

Yours truly,



So up till now no reply (yes calm down, I know it will take a day or two for a reply) but I am sure now these scammers (meaning both PH & SD&R) will know I mean business.

I will update you all as and when.

A truly excellent post, I admire your stance and determination not to happily accept the refund and leave it at that. WELL DONE. Please keep us updated on how this goes, I will be very interested in how they try to get out of this predicament,

marleyboy

I called both My Time and Shoppers Discount. Both offices are currently unmanned due to the poor weather! How convenient, I am sure call traffic is high, as many of us have made on-line purchases on the run up to Christmas.

I cancelled using the automated services. What's interesting is that both organisations have similar telephone numbers, the telephone menu system is identical and the cancellation reference numbers both use the format S-XXXXXXXX. The two organisations must be the same company. Now, if I had willingly signed up to a fee charging discount service, why do I need two? This is a big scam, beware and check your credit card statements.

The scam is just as popular across the Ocean http://believablelies.blogspot.com/2009/07/response-from-complete-savingsshoppers.html

How do they deal with unauthorized access in US https://www.member-center.com/Forms/Affidavit/Index.rails?c=EFCFD457E26FEC889E81AAC62CC3B8C3922C74A32ACDD8100E34816DA1B1B87C

Money-saving expert Martin Lewis is more forthright. "The way these type of companies market themselves is distasteful," he says. "It looks like you are getting a great deal but it can end up costing you a lot. What I don't understand is why big companies deal with these firms. The income they derive from such deals can't be worth the negative impact these offers have on their brands."

http://www.guardian.co.uk/money/2010/feb/13/shopper-discounts-and-rewards

To obtain the card data, the marketing firms paid nearly $800 million to 88 e-tail stores, including Orbitz, Buy.com, Travelocity, Barnes & Noble, Pizza Hut, and Priceline. While some of these stores have otherwise established solid reputations, the material disclosed by Senate investigators indicates these retailers sold their customers' financial data to third parties--something that experts say many consumers are unaware of and would likely find abhorrent.

Sen. John Rockefeller, chairman of the Senate committee wants Visa, MasterCard, and American Express to answer questions how marketers were allowed to buy consumer credit card information from top retail sites.


The sheer number of retailers accused of betraying customer trust and the scrutiny now being focused on Visa, MasterCard, and American Express is turning the situation into an unprecedented scandal for the e-commerce sector.

The reason that the commerce committee may be turning the focus onto the credit card companies is that they were in a prime position to halt the deceptive marketing practices long ago, experts say.


To understand what responsibility the credit card companies may have had, you have to know how the controversial marketing practices worked.


First, a consumer who is finishing up a transaction at a Web store would be presented with a pop-up ad. An offer for a cash-back reward of, say, $10 is written in large print. Customers are informed, again in bold text that they can get the reward if they enter their e-mail address.


Further down and written in much more obscure text are the full terms of the deal. That's how customers are notified that by entering their e-mail address they will effectively be agreeing to join a membership program and allowing their retailer to turn over their credit card information so it can be charged monthly, perhaps as much as $20.



For this reason, the three marketing firms and their retail partners say the whole thing is legal and above board. All the terms are there in the fine print and it's not their fault that consumers don't read them.


Congressional investigators turned up documents, however, that showed they were well aware of the potential deception. Investigators presented internal e-mails from the marketing firms that illustrate how they purposely employ tactics to mislead consumers while staying within the letter of the law.


According to members of the commerce committee, it's a classic loophole play. In addition, documents show that the marketers told retail partners that they were much more likely to make money if the retailers gave them their customers' credit card information rather than to having to ask for it from the cardholder.


That's where American Express, Visa and Mastercard come in.
Had the big card companies followed their own rules, these dubious marketing tactics would have failed long ago, said Ben Edelman, an assistant professor at Harvard Business School who focuses on electronic marketplaces.


Visa, MasterCard, and American Express require that only a cardholder, not any intermediary or merchant, provide a credit card number to complete a transaction.



This is key as many consumers are completely unsuspecting that an e-mail address is enough to authorize a purchase, according to Edelman, who offered written testimony during last month's committee hearing held on the marketers.



"Consumers naturally expect that if they don't type their card numbers they won't be charged," Edelman said. "That's a good rule of thumb, and it's true almost everywhere, but not at these tricky sites."



Another question that Visa, MasterCard, and American Express must answer is why they appear to have ignored what appears, according to the government's report, to be a large volume of customer complaints about Webloyalty, Affinion, and Vertrue.


The card companies have rules in place to boot merchants off their systems who have too many customer complaints or "chargebacks," the term used to describe the refunding of money to a credit card owner who has been charged incorrectly or fraudulently.


The Senate committee has indicated it will hold another hearing sometime after the start of the year and intends to call to testify the CEOs of the marketing firms and many of the Web stores. Perhaps, the chiefs of Visa and the other card companies should be there as well.


"Credit card networks have hundreds of pages of rules detailing every requirement of banks, retailers, and credit card users," Edelman said. "The rules exactly prohibit these practices. But what good are rules when they are not enforced."

http://news.cnet.com/media-maverick/?keyword=Pizza+Hut

marleyboy

http://adam.rosi-kessel.org/pdf/webloyalty_complaint.pdf

Original and FULL US COUNTY COURT conscript;

pipps0316

[EMAIL="martin.child@webloyalty.co.uk"]martin.child@webloyalty.co.uk[/EMAIL]

This is the email address for MARTIN CHILD MD of the UK arm of web loyalty - aka shopper dicount & rewards.

Lets all get emailing!!

pipps0316

http://www.webloyalty.co.uk/about-ourmanagement.html

You can find a lot from the above link regarding the UK management of webloyalty

pipps0316

Are these people for real? On their website they openly admit to the below:



What information do we collect about you?

We automatically collect the following information from you: the IP address of the computer you are using, your domain name, your browser, your operating system, the navigation path that brought you to our site, aggregate information on what pages you access or visit and user-specific information about the pages you access or visit. In addition, if you volunteer such information, we will also collect visitor survey information, and any site registrations you may complete. Finally, if you volunteer it, we will collect certain personally identifiable information, including, but not limited to, your name, your email address, your telephone number, your postal address and your employer (collectively "Personal Information").
Our pages may use "cookies". Cookies record user-specific information on what pages users access or visit, alert visitors to new areas that we think might be of interest to them when they return to our site, record past activity at a site in order to provide better service when visitors return to our site, help ensure visitors are not repeatedly sent the same banner ads, customise web page content based on visitors' browser type or other information that the visitor sends.

Donna141

Today I have realsied that I have fallen victim to this scam - I've been charged on my credit card statement for the last 3 months which I am shocked at as I am usually very on the ball with my bank statements. I am adamant that I NEVER entered my credit card details on this site - I remember clicking on the link and decided I couldn't be bothered going any further with it.

I have rung the company I purchased from and I am currently waiting for a reply from the Customer Services Manager and of course I have already been onto SD & R to cancel my membership and apply for a full refund.

The tv program "This Morning" has a regular slot on scams so I have taken the liberty of writing to them and drawing their attention to this scam and this website. Hopefully their researchers will investigate further and feature it in one of their programs. Perhaps if we all email "This Morning" (headed "scams") this appalling company will be named and shamed on national tv!

eilishfk

I had the same problem. £10 per month taken from my account for 4 months. I'd deleted any e-mail I may have had with the membership number and was not keen on giving them my card details (despite the fact they must already have them!). When I rang (08082341539) it asks for either one of these things. I didn't enter anything and it asked again. Didn't enter the 2nd time and it put me through to an operator. She took my postcode, found my membership and cancelled it. She then asked if there was anything else, I said I wanted my money back.

She is refunding the last 3 payments (no questions, they must know this is dodgy as hell), but is not authorised to refund any more than that. She is e-mailing me with a refund form, so I can claim back the 4th payment that was taken.

I'll update and let you know if this is successful. They said the refund would take up to 10 working days.