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

katebl

Thanks to those that replied, I will be checking my spam emails, and also keeping an eye on my online banking to see if any DD's are set up in the next few weeks - what a bl00dy cheek these scammers have.

eboseph

I read with increasing alarm this interesting thread. Thank you for all the contributors who made me realise that I was not alone in falling for this scam. I have just noticed the £10 transaction on my recent AMEX statement. I contacted AMEX who basically informed me there was nothing they could do and suggested I contacted Shoppers Discount direct. i called their automated service and cancelled my membership. A confirmation email was received with a reference number. I am disgusted that a scam that must be well known to credit card companies can continue to allow this fraud to exist. Also, how on earth can Shoppers Discount be associated with so many respected companies? This horror started with an innocent purchase of concert tickets through Ticketmaster. I am furious at this deception, and I want a full refund of the money fraudulently taken from me.

marleyboy

eboseph wrote: »

I read with increasing alarm this interesting thread. Thank you for all the contributors who made me realise that I was not alone in falling for this scam. I have just noticed the £10 transaction on my recent AMEX statement. I contacted AMEX who basically informed me there was nothing they could do and suggested I contacted Shoppers Discount direct. i called their automated service and cancelled my membership. A confirmation email was received with a reference number. I am disgusted that a scam that must be well known to credit card companies can continue to allow this fraud to exist. Also, how on earth can Shoppers Discount be associated with so many respected companies? This horror started with an innocent purchase of concert tickets through Ticketmaster. I am furious at this deception, and I want a full refund of the money fraudulently taken from me.

Demanding a FULL REFUND is easy, and rest assured they will pay it BY LAW, simply be sure to demand a FULL REFUND reminding them you never willingly signed up to this scam.

It only takes two steps:

1-A phone call (2-3minute), confirm your email, name and address (and you'd like all your money back, as you didn't know that you signed up to this scam).

2-Posting of the claim form. (which they email to you as a result of the phone call):



Note: Your cancellation ref number is in the email they send with the claim form.

Shopper Discounts & Rewards contact details:

Email: [EMAIL="customerservice@shopperdiscountsandrewards.co.uk"]customerservice@shopperdiscountsandrewards.co.uk[/EMAIL]

Mail: Shopper Discounts & Rewards
P.O. Box 450
Sevenoaks, Kent,
TN13 9HN
Phone: Customer Service
0808 234 1539 Mon-Fri

Do not settle for anything less or allow them to fob you off.!!!!!!!!!!!!

eboseph

Thanks for the response. When I contacted the Shopper Discounts number, I was unable to speak to anyone, and so unable to request a full refund. I have still received a reference number for my cancellation. I hope this will be sufficient when I write to them requesting a full refund.

I also contacted Ticketmaster venting my anger that they willingly associate themselves with this scam. After repeated requests, I was reluctantly put through to a senior customer care person who informed me that in the 7 months she has worked at Ticketmaster she has never received a complaint about Shoppers Discount. I told her that she should google this company. This cannot be right. This fraud is up there with those charlatans who scam you for anti-spy PC software. I have lost faith in any company that affiliates themselves with the fraudsters at Shopper Discounts.

eboseph

A further call to Shopper Discounts provided me with a refund of 3 months (£30), along with a claim form for the previous months.

Almost there....

Thank you for the responses.

eboseph

I feel that companies such as Ticketmaster play their part in this scam. I have just sent the following complaint via their website:


I want to bring to your attention my displeasure with Tickmaster in being associated with a company known as Shopper Discounts. When purchasing my tickets, I must have followed a link from your website encouraging further discounts from future tickets. This has resulted in £10 being deducted from my credit card account since November 2009. This came to light this morning and I have since cancelled any type of membership I inadvertently joined. Further investigation of this company brings up countless complaints about their shady practice. The following link from MoneySavingExpert.com brings up 43 pages of examples of innocent people caught up in this scam.

moneysavingexperts link to this thread


I telephoned Ticketmaster this morning to vent my displeasure and initially spoke with a man called Phil (extension 818). Only after much pleading did he reluctantly pass me onto a supervisor called Mary (extension 707). She appeared oblivious to the fact that countless people have been the subject of this infamous scam. She kept citing the small print of the initial transaction, but this is how most scams are perpetrated. Basically, I ended up with £80 taken from my account without my consent. The fact that Ticketmaster, a reputable company that reportedly prides itself on its ethics and commitment to customer service, is affiliated to this fraud is both shameful and despicable.

I intend to contact my MP to bring to light the fraud that has been reported throughout the internet and several mainstream newspapers.

NonGeographicalMan

vanzant wrote: »

Hi,several months ago i booked flights with flybe and have some how or other apparently signed up to rewardsfirst who have taken 2 x £14.95 payments from my account.

Has anyone else been caught by this crowd and if so had you any joy with a refund or stopping membership.

See my below emails to FlyBe on this subject. As far as I am concerned they are stooping to sub O'Leary levels in pushing AdaptiveAffinity/Veritrue Continuous Credit Card authority products on their customers when this company has already had to enter in an agreement under the Enterprise Act with the OFT to desist from some of its more abusive practices and when their parent company Veritrue has been subject to a class action lawsuit on this issue in the United States. It beggars belief that people get taken to court for minor speeding infractions while blatant thievery of this kind is still apparently legal.

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Original Message

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Subject: Disgraceful/Dishonest £15 Cashback Promotion With RewardsFirst & CreditRatingMatters
Date: Mon, 26 Jul 2010 14:33:35 +0100 From:
To: [EMAIL="jim.french@flybe.com"]jim.french@flybe.com[/EMAIL] CC: [EMAIL="mike.rutter@flybe.com"]mike.rutter@flybe.com[/EMAIL], [EMAIL="andrew.strong@flybe.com"]andrew.strong@flybe.com[/EMAIL], [EMAIL="mark.elkins@flybe.com"]mark.elkins@flybe.com[/EMAIL], [EMAIL="andrew.knuckey@flybe.com"]andrew.knuckey@flybe.com[/EMAIL], [EMAIL="tsadvice@devon.gov.uk"]tsadvice@devon.gov.uk[/EMAIL], [EMAIL="miles.brignall@guardian.co.uk"]miles.brignall@guardian.co.uk[/EMAIL],

Dear Mr French,

Disgraceful £15 Cashback/Free Credit Rating Report With RewardsFirst & CreditRatingMatters

I am writing in a sense of near stunned disbelief to complain in the strongest possible terms about my Egg Money mastercard credit card details having been provided to two seemingly highly disreputable, devious and dishonest businesses in Edgware, North London, both as a direct result of having merely wanted to book a one way flight with you from _________ to Southamption on ________ as I then did last Thursday 22nd July.

At the time I booked my flight your site produced a pop up box indicating that I would earn £15 cashback on my flight if I signed up with Rewards First and that I had the right to cancel free of charge in the first 28 days without penalty. Accepting this offer then led to another offer to receive a free credit report from Credit Rating Matters, again with the same cancel free within 28 days basis. Even if I did not accept the £15 cashback offer on the pop up from your website FlyBe then went out of its way to try to further entrap its customers in to giving their card details to this highly dubious bunch of North London business persons by also including an embedded link for the £15 cashback in the below booking confirmation email where the customer is exhorted to "Click here to claim £15.00 Cashback Reward on your Current FlyBe.com booking" If customers are then enticed in to clicking this link they are taken to a web page at https://www.membershipme.com/Offers/Pages/OfferPages/A90/U01/10Q/500/DemoAndBilling.aspx?ID=70E736D759559064C5575C00E2E58B1A&siteid=2edc3e92b7&mpt= where they are then further enticed to claim the £15 cashback and a further 28 day free trial of the service and anyone thinking of not doing so is then further goaded with a click thru button that says "No Thanks, I forfeit my reward."

Even as a completely un-naive and fully web savvy customer I was somehow lured in to signing up for both these services since I fully intended to then claim the £15 cashback and cancel my membership within 28 days with Rewards First and to get my free credit report and cancel with CreditRatingMatters. But of course I foolishly thought that I would immediately get emails from Rewards First and Credit Rating Matters giving me my membership numbers to claim the £15 cashback by post and allowing me to order the free Credit Rating Report.

Instead four days later I find no emails at all have arrived from either of these operations (both domiciled at addresses in Edgware, London with very similar postcodes) but they have my credit card details and are now in a position to debit my card with £14.95 per month after 28 days. Clearly you can then imagine my concern when I also came across comments at www.reviewcentre.com/reviews101216.html such as "Beware the £10 cashback offer on Flybe flights that can cost you £14.95 per month forever! If you accept it, you are also accepting trial membership of Rewards First, a discount shopping site and after one month they will charge your card £14.95 per month until you stop your membership" and "I recenlty booked with flybe for the first time using their website. It is quite clear that they are a bunch of con men using flights as an excuse to steal money. Charges seem to appear from no-where. I complained and they basically sent a load of speal without actually giving an answer but the rough message was they weren't giving a penny back if a liife depended on it." These comments from other customers seem to confirm to me that you and your fellow board members are now so utterly desperate for revenue that you will embrace almost any business practice no matter how devious and unpleasant it may appear to your customers. And this is before we even consider your other more obvious scams such as trying to charge customers several pounds to book a standard cabin seat without it being immediately obvious how the customer can opt out of paying this additional charge (even though I eventually worked out how to).

Leaving aside the fact that your website does not currently seem to be compliant with EU regulations requiring all compulsory non optional customer fees to be clearly shown up front on the first customer fare and date selection screen I still cannot actually believe that you are going out of your way to thrust your customers in to the hands of what seems to be an extremely dubious business operation that is almost certainly deliberately fraudulent (i.e. emails that it knows will enable customers to claim the cash back and the free credit report and cancel within 28 days are being purposefully withheld so that customers forget to cancel the services and are then hit with £14.95 per month fees times two). I also cannot believe how rude, unpleasant and nasty these two businesses were when I telephoned them on the phone to ask why the emails had not been sent.

However difficult it may be for airlines to make a profit during the current recession I am still literally stunned that you would try to persuade your customers to disclose their credit card details to an organisation that seems to be headquartered outside the UK and that appears to well known for quasi criminal practices in continuing to charge people £14.95 per month for services they do not actually want to take on a paying basis and then making it as hard as possible for customer to cancel those services.

Just investigating this matter and speaking to Rewards First, Credit Rating Matters, Consumer Direct, Devon Trading Standards and the E-Crime unit of the Metropolitan Police has already wasted two to three hours of my time and I fully expect that I will never get the promised £15 cashback and that Rewards First and Credit Rating Matters will also debit my credit card with £14.95 each after 28 days despite being instructed not to do so.

Mr French you and your fellow board members may perhaps believe that all revenue of whatever kind is good (indeed it would appear that you are actually trying to out O'Leary even Michael O'Leary in terms of your various hidden add on taxes and charges) but I honestly think that by promoting this deal with Credit Rating Matters and Rewards First to your customers that you have on this occasion severely overstepped the mark and that the long term consequences are likely to be that you will massively damage your brand with your customers (both directly and through comment in the press), even if you are not also fined or investigated by Trading Standards and/or the Police in terms of encouraging your customers to give their card details to an organisation seemingly intent on making criminal misuse of them. The article by Miles Brignall in The Guardian on February 13th this year at www.guardian.co.uk/money/2010/feb/13/shopper-discounts-and-rewards is instructive as to just how unpopular some less than honest website cross promotions by well known brands can be with a company's long term customers.

I am utterly shocked and dismayed by this link between your company and these two extremely dubious and seemingly dishonest north London commercial outfits and I expect you at a bare minimum to get in touch with these two organisations to tell them that they do not have any right to make charges on my credit card and I also expect FlyBe to itself pay me the £15 that I was falsely promised in Cashback when I made my decision to book your my but that is in reality almost certainly unobtainable from Rewards First.

I look forward to hearing from you about this matter.

Yours sincerely,

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Original Message

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Subject: Confirmation of your Flybe flight(s) Date:
From: Flybe - Do not reply. [EMAIL="DO_NOT_REPLY&#64;bookings.flybe.com"]<DO_NOT_REPLY@bookings.flybe.com>[/EMAIL]



Flight booking: Confirmation


Your flight booking reference:




Full Booking Details

BOOKING REFERENCE :


Operated by Flybe
Economy

TRANSACTION AMOUNT INCLUDING ALL TAXES AND CHARGES:

If payment is denied using this card, Flybe will ask for another form of payment and reserves the right to refuse boarding in the event of non-payment.

Sponsored links

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See Below Promises made by Rewards First/Credit Rating Matters On Their Website

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Thank you!

You will receive a welcome email shortly with instructions on how to begin accessing your members-only benefits with your Rewards FirstSM trial membership. If you have any questions, please Contact Us!

To make sure you receive our emails. Please add [EMAIL="membersavings&#64;a.rewardsfirst.co.uk"]membersavings@a.rewardsfirst.co.uk[/EMAIL] to your address book.

Thank You!

You will receive a Welcome Email within 24 hours with instructions on how to begin accessing your members-only benefits. To ensure that you receive this email, please add the [EMAIL="membersavings&#64;a.creditratingmatters.co.uk"]membersavings@a.creditratingmatters.co.uk[/EMAIL] email address to your "safe senders" list. If you have any questions, please Contact Us!

mikewb

I also got caught by rewardsfirst after booking a flight with Flybe. Received the promised £10 (now £15) and later found £14.95 taken from my bank. I could not contact this company and my bank advised me to cancel my debit card which I did. I have lost £4.95 but have decided it's not worth the effort to recover it. [TEXT DELETED BY FORUM TEAM] I have since noticed Lastminute.com are also advertising this deal. This seems to have been going for a long time and yet these large companies do nothing about it. rewardsfirst are not the only name they trade under, there are possible hundreds! check out on the internet. How about contacting Watchdog or some such TV program. I'll think about that.:mad:

NonGeographicalMan

mikewb wrote: »

This seems to have been going for a long time and yet these large companies do nothing about it. rewardsfirst are not the only name they trade under, there are possible hundreds! check out on the internet. How about contacting Watchdog or some such TV program. I'll think about that.:mad:

Go to www.192.com do a Business search and just enter the postcode for "Rewards First" and you will be amazed to see how many other business names seem to be operating out of that postcode.

As to FlyBe I think their complicity in the scam is utterly deplorable since it runs not only to the exhortation to join the two schemes when you book but also involves sending in a copy of your FlyBe flight confirmation email to Rewards First to claim the £15 cashback while that email also contains another image and click thru link for Rewards First exhorting you to get your £15. When you get to that screen for Rewards First if you think better of it and want to leave there is also a link then saying something like "no I give up my right to claim my £15 cashback". So more immoral blackmail type pressure to get a supposedly easy £15 endorsed by FlyBe it is hard to imagine.

There is supposed to be EU legislation against promotions that distort rational consumer choice making at the point of sale. I would strongly suggest the current FlyBe promotion with Adaptive Affinity offends against all of that and that if Ryanair did the same thing the OFT and/or the EU commission would make the effort to come down on them like a ton of bricks. However they can't seem to be bothered at the moment for a smaller minnow like FlyBe. I have copied in senior staff at the OFT's Consumer Division on all of the relevant correspondence.

Also as a footnote due to my high level correspondence with FlyBe on this subject I have also this afternoon received a phone call from a person from Adaptive Affinity assuring me that my credit card will not charged for either scheme and that a cheque for £15 will be in the post in the next couple of days and that they will also try to sort out a free credit rating report for me too. He still tried to maintain that I hadn't completed the membership screens properly but when I quoted the confirmation of membership text I had got from both registrations with a promise an email would then be sent he rather shut up on that point, clearly realising that he was on to a loser.

I would suggest that anyone who is still having trouble cancelling continuous credit card authorities with Rewards First or CreditRatingMatters and who joined them due to the FlyBe promotion sends an email of complaint to [EMAIL="jim.french&#64;flybe.com"]jim.french@flybe.com[/EMAIL]

It might not be a bad idea to also send an email of complaint to OFT Senior Direct of Consumer Protection - heather.clayton@oft.gsi.gov.uk - as her name was on the previous press release issued about Adaptive Affinity by the OFT at https://www.oft.gov.uk/news-and-updates/press/2009/75-09
[EMAIL="jim.french&#64;flybe.com"][/EMAIL]

RuthnJasper

I would imagine that these ne'er-do-well scammers make it extremely worth the while of reputable companies such as Ticketmaster to be associated with them. Why else would they do it and then attempt to deny or cover-up after the fact?

Good on eboseph and all the others for not putting up with it.

To me, this ruse seems no different to those scams where people offer expensive kit on Ebay, high bids flood in, and when the auction ends it transpires that the winner has paid thousands for a photo of, or a users' manual for, the advertised goods - with the notice of what was actually on sale being buried way, way down in the smallest of the small print. A nasty scam - or, to give it it's more basic name, theft by deception.

I think this issue is serious enough to warrant an MSE or Watchdog/Panorama/Dispatches investigation.