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The Future of Shopping: Trapping You in a Club You Didn't Know You Joined (bloomberg.com)

Posted by msmash on from the word-of-caution dept.

Just a word of caution: the next time you spot a great deal on a shopping portal, you will want to carefully look for all the radio buttons, and tick boxes -- and perhaps also skim through the ToS -- before placing the order. Bloomberg has an in-depth piece on the ordeal of a customer who purchased a lingerie item from an e-commerce website called Adore Me. Little did the customer know that the $19.95 she was spending to purchase a piece of cloth would end up costing her -- partly because of her own ignorance -- more than $300. Adore Me, you see, maintains a subscription model in which it charges users a fee of around $40 a month, even if they don't purchase anything. It might surprise many, but Adore Me isn't the only shopping portal or service that runs this sort of tactic. "It's the new thing," says Francisca Allen, the deputy district attorney of California's Santa Clara County. "There's thousands and thousands of companies that do this." What's more, these companies have made it frustratingly difficult to cancel these subscriptions -- it often requires you to sit through a one-hour call to the customer representative and listening to a bunch of funky songs that you suddenly don't adore as much. Bloomberg reports:Hundreds of customer complaints against Adore Me and other subscription e-commerce businesses are stacking up at the Federal Trade Commission, according to records obtained by Bloomberg. They follow a pattern: Shoppers believe they've been tricked into signing up for recurring credit card charges, often for a relatively small amount that can be easily overlooked in a monthly bill. Then companies make it an exasperating hassle to quit and get a refund.

9 of 165 comments (clear)

  1. Other scams... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Informative

    Dealdash dot com... charges you $0.60 per automatic bid even if you don't win the auction. The TV ads are highly deceiving. They even have an elaborate troll system to make their reviews look good. Hellcatx... they are running a massive TV ad campaign for a car giveaway that supposedly helps charity. The prises are probably worth 1/100th of the income, and no mention of how much actually goes to charity.

    1. Re:Other scams... by JustBoo · · Score: 5, Informative

      Here is THE ANSWER. Use Paypal.

      First, you won't be giving your credit card info to gawd knows who. It can be literally anyone from a group of criminals in Russia to psycho teens in Brazil to douche companies described in the article. If a 'company' does not have the wherewithal and ability to get setup to take Paypal, do you really want to give them your credit card anyway? If they don't take Paypal, I consider the company incompetent or scam artists.

      If you still somehow get on some recurring plan through Paypal, that is registered with Paypal as an actively recurring charge, you can go to Paypal and simply change the status of that account to inactive. Done. Paypal will no longer payout to them.

      I've done this myself with so-called companies that refuse to stop billing me. I check the list at least once a month. it has saved my tones of time and money. Note, I am not affiliated with Paypal in any way and rarely recommend any business. But with online shopping, Paypal has truly worked for me.

    2. Re:Other scams... by HiThere · · Score: 4, Informative

      Odd comment. Based on prior stories I have included PayPal as one of the scam companies.

      A better answer, though one that's bothersome, is to have a special limited credit card, and use that for web purchases. Many drugstores sell them, and probably many other places do too. But doing it that way is a bother. I've opted for a less secure way...I use two separate banks. One to store money, and one the handle transactions. The credit cards are linked to the one that only hold a small amount of cash at a time, and where I periodically refill the accounts. So you can choose your degree of security by deciding how much cash to hold in your transaction accounts.

      --

      I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
  2. Re:Ten CDs for a buck by cellocgw · · Score: 3, Informative

    Sounds like it to me. And at least back in those days, you could return anything you didn't want for free. But the LP/CD clubs didn't charge a monthly fee for belonging, which I think is the new twist here.

    Personally, I'd send a return-receipt registered letter telling them you ain't a member any more, and use that when it gets to lawsuit or debt-collection time.

    --
    https://app.box.com/WitthoftResume Code: https://github.com/cellocgw
  3. Reverse the charge by smooth+wombat · · Score: 4, Informative

    The moment you see the charge hit your bill you contact your credit card company and have them do a chargeback. Tell them you've been trying to cancel with this company who refuses to honor your request and these are fraudulent charges.

    The credit card company will remove the charge from your bill then attempt to collect from the other company.

    Rinse and repeat each month.

    http://www.geeksonfinance.com/...

    --
    We will bankrupt ourselves in the vain search for absolute security. -- Dwight D. Eisenhower
  4. Not difficult to cancel by ebonum · · Score: 3, Informative

    One call to the credit card company and all will be fixed.
    I think most people will be pleased to find how easy it is to get their credit card company to reject all new charges from a online vendor plus credit you back for whatever was taken.
    Plus, when Mastercard or Visa see a lot of problems with a vendor, MC and Visa will cut them off. Or make it more expensive/difficult for the bad company to operate.

  5. CC Dispute by flyingfsck · · Score: 3, Informative

    The easiest way to reverse it is to call your credit card company and dispute the charges.

    --
    Excuse me, but please get off my Pennisetum Clandestinum, eh!
  6. Re:cue libertarian fucktards... by complete+loony · · Score: 4, Informative

    One of the cleverest features of the rational expectations revolution was the appropriation of the term "rational." Thereby, the opponents of this approach were forced into the defensive position of either being irrational or of modeling others as irrational, neither of which are comfortable positions for most economists. (Barro 1984)
    I suggest that critics instead adopt the attacking position of describing this concept (the capacity to foretell the whole future of the economy) as a dictionary would, as "Prophetic Expectations".

    The Dodgy Dynamics of Economics

    The rest of that paper focuses on demolishing the whole concept.

    --
    09F91102 no, 455FE104 nope, F190A1E8 uh-uh, 7A5F8A09 that's not it, C87294CE no. Ah! 452F6E403CDF10714E41DFAA257D313F.
  7. Re: cue libertarian fucktards... by dryeo · · Score: 4, Informative

    You have to weigh that against the fact that a greedy corporation can ultimately do nothing to you, while the government has the power to fine you or send you to jail, and they can send a group of heavily armed men to break down your door to force you to comply with their decisions.

    Just yesterday I saw the private railway police, so yes there are still corporate forces that have the power to arrest you.
    It wasn't that long ago that corporations had much more power, see eg the Pinkerton Detective Agency who at one point was larger then the military of the USA and routinely beat and killed people the corporations were unfriendly with.
    There's a reason that we've transferred most all law enforcement to the government, mainly that they're more (or at least were) responsible then big business to the people. Businesses ultimate goal is to make sure you have no choice but to deal with them and at times have been very successful at this.

    --
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverted_totalitarianism