Webloyalty sent me an example survey/charge authorization as a Word document. I'd like to post it, or paste the text here, but haven't yet been able to copy the text. I may resort to manually transcribing it as a separate post. This particular example seems to make it pretty clear that your credit card information will be exchanged for your e-mail address and that opting out before 30 days will prevent the charges. So I guess if you pretend this is a brick-and-mortar store, it's like a store allowing parking lot vendors soliciting your e-mail address and presenting you with fine print saying that your e-mail address will be exhanged for your credit card number from the store you just walked out of.............
I really don't see this as a service or convenience for the victim/customer. In general, when providing your email address (your junk email address at that), you don't expect that action to result in charges, just more spam for breast enlargement/penis enhancement/etc. To continue my analogy, it's like a business' land owner requiring them to allow parking lot salespeople hiding behind fine print to access their customer information. Not all web merchants (the brick and mortar store, in this example) are even aware of the agreement and are not aware that their customers' credit card information is being accessed like that. Apparently some are and share in the recurring revenue...................
To summarize, giving out your spam e-mail address after an online purchase is like giving your phone number to that ugly chick at the bar just to get her off your ass. Except that she doesn't have a cute friend (and she has herpes). They both have your phone number.
On second thought, this is Slashdot...we don't have social lives and meet actual chicks.
Here is the letter I just received:
We are sorry if you experienced concern about the Reservation Rewards membership offer as we strive to make our offer clear and informational to consumers. I have attached a copy of the offer page to demonstrate that we provided full disclosure of the offer details.
If you review the attached screenshot of the offer, you will see that we allow the consumer to make educated choices regarding the products and services they purchase. For this reason, we put the most significant details of our offer in a prominent location - immediately next to the acceptance button (so that a consumer will have those details in front of him or her before joining the service).
Moreover, we go an extra step and also require consumers to provide us their email address twice, to make them pause and take the time to read and understand our offer. To accept the Reservation Rewards trial membership registration we require a consumer to enter their email address into two required fields on the trial membership application page and then click the "Yes" button (see attached Exhibit One - this is the form of the page responded to). Immediately above the boxes where a consumer would enter their email address is the statement:
"By entering my email address and clicking YES, I have read and agree to the Offer Details and authorize Fandango to securely transfer my name, zip code and credit card information to Reservation Rewards for benefit processing."
The offer for a $10.00 Cash Back Award and a Reservation Rewards trial membership is meant as a bonus to Fandango's valued customers. Even if a consumer accepts the trial membership and then cancels the membership, the $10.00 Cash Back Award is still redeemable.
When a misunderstanding such as this one occurs, we willing to cancel the membership and provide a refund to the consumer as we have done for you. As you requested, your Reservation Rewards membership is cancelled and we have issued twenty-five refunds of $7.00 each for the membership fees incurred. These refunds should appear as credits in your account.
I hope this letter answers your questions about the Reservation Rewards offer and also assures you that there was no unauthorized billing to
I'll be damned. After complaining to Webloyalty last week, I actually got a complete refund this morning ($175). I guess if you complain a little, they reimburse the last month, but if you're a real pain in the ass, they actually do the right thing and reimburse all charges--probably to keep that squeaky-clean image with BBB. I still think they need to be punished, but I'm not sure how...
For now I'd settle for the dreaded Slashdot effect.
I view punishment as a separate issue from the alleged reimbursement.
I bet if all Slashdot readers checked their credit/debit card statements (those that don't, anyway), there would be a lot of surprised faces.
I feel like those guys in "Office Space". This company is evil and it must go down. Having said that, financial constraints prevent me from hiring a lawyer. I may have to settle for a class action kind of thing.
These are some other names Webloyalty operates under: Reservation Rewards, WalletShield, Travel Values Plus, and Buyer's Assurance.
http://www.webloyalty.com/success_stories.asp
These are some companies that they deal with: 1-800-flowers.com, americangreetings.com, classmates.com, coolsavings.com
half.com (part of eBay), hotels.com, joann.com, kingsizedirect.com, lillianvernon.com, movietickets.com, myfamily.com, onetravel.com, orbitz.com, priceline.com, riverdeep.com, smartbargains.com, webstakes.com, Brylane Home, Chadwick's, Lane Bryant, MapBlast, MyLotto, MyPoints, SandBox, Time-Life, Walter Drake, ZDNet.
watch out for pop-ups from shopping cart provider
on
How the Phishing Biz Works
·
· Score: 2, Informative
This scam is huge. It got me. Not sure if you'd call it phishing, maybe just unscrupulous activity by the shopping cart provider, but this will rob you just by supplying an email address.
http://adam.rosi-kessel.org/weblog/the_man/webloya lty_aka_wli_reservations_is_a_scam.html
I purchased movie tickets from Fandango.com two years ago. Evidently a popup appeared after my transaction offering a discount for filling in a survey (must have been using the girlfriend's Windows box w/ IE). I gave my disposable email address and that became authorization to start charging me a monthly fee. I did not provide my credit card number, other than to Fandango to buy movie tickets. Fandango was nice enough to forward my credit card to this company Reservation Rewards aka Webloyalty. That's all it took.
Read the link above. It's unbelievable that this kind of thing could happen, but these crooks are operating to this date. They have quite a few other names. I've called, complained, and in theory I'm getting completely refunded. When/if I do, I'm going to contest the last two monthly charges ($7 each) and see if I can make them eat a service charge. Just getting my money back wouldn't be enough because probably only a small percent catch what this company does, and those who do may not catch it quickly. If you're the type who doesn't scrutinize your debit card transaction statements, they might be robbing you. At $7 per month, this amount is small enough that it could fly below the radar.
I wonder if http://www.webloyalty.com/ could withstand the slashdot effect? These people need it bad.
Slashdot Mirror
I've made this before. It definitely tastes different. I got over 10% alcohol in about two weeks. There was definitely a burn...Git 'r' done.
Webloyalty sent me an example survey/charge authorization as a Word document. I'd like to post it, or paste the text here, but haven't yet been able to copy the text. I may resort to manually transcribing it as a separate post. This particular example seems to make it pretty clear that your credit card information will be exchanged for your e-mail address and that opting out before 30 days will prevent the charges. So I guess if you pretend this is a brick-and-mortar store, it's like a store allowing parking lot vendors soliciting your e-mail address and presenting you with fine print saying that your e-mail address will be exhanged for your credit card number from the store you just walked out of. ............
I really don't see this as a service or convenience for the victim/customer. In general, when providing your email address (your junk email address at that), you don't expect that action to result in charges, just more spam for breast enlargement/penis enhancement/etc. To continue my analogy, it's like a business' land owner requiring them to allow parking lot salespeople hiding behind fine print to access their customer information. Not all web merchants (the brick and mortar store, in this example) are even aware of the agreement and are not aware that their customers' credit card information is being accessed like that. Apparently some are and share in the recurring revenue. ..................
To summarize, giving out your spam e-mail address after an online purchase is like giving your phone number to that ugly chick at the bar just to get her off your ass. Except that she doesn't have a cute friend (and she has herpes). They both have your phone number.
On second thought, this is Slashdot...we don't have social lives and meet actual chicks.
Here is the letter I just received:
We are sorry if you experienced concern about the Reservation Rewards membership offer as we strive to make our offer clear and informational to consumers. I have attached a copy of the offer page to demonstrate that we provided full disclosure of the offer details.
If you review the attached screenshot of the offer, you will see that we allow the consumer to make educated choices regarding the products and services they purchase. For this reason, we put the most significant details of our offer in a prominent location - immediately next to the acceptance button (so that a consumer will have those details in front of him or her before joining the service).
Moreover, we go an extra step and also require consumers to provide us their email address twice, to make them pause and take the time to read and understand our offer. To accept the Reservation Rewards trial membership registration we require a consumer to enter their email address into two required fields on the trial membership application page and then click the "Yes" button (see attached Exhibit One - this is the form of the page responded to). Immediately above the boxes where a consumer would enter their email address is the statement:
"By entering my email address and clicking YES, I have read and agree to the Offer Details and authorize Fandango to securely transfer my name, zip code and credit card information to Reservation Rewards for benefit processing."
The offer for a $10.00 Cash Back Award and a Reservation Rewards trial membership is meant as a bonus to Fandango's valued customers. Even if a consumer accepts the trial membership and then cancels the membership, the $10.00 Cash Back Award is still redeemable.
When a misunderstanding such as this one occurs, we willing to cancel the membership and provide a refund to the consumer as we have done for you. As you requested, your Reservation Rewards membership is cancelled and we have issued twenty-five refunds of $7.00 each for the membership fees incurred. These refunds should appear as credits in your account.
I hope this letter answers your questions about the Reservation Rewards offer and also assures you that there was no unauthorized billing to
I'll be damned. After complaining to Webloyalty last week, I actually got a complete refund this morning ($175). I guess if you complain a little, they reimburse the last month, but if you're a real pain in the ass, they actually do the right thing and reimburse all charges--probably to keep that squeaky-clean image with BBB. I still think they need to be punished, but I'm not sure how...
For now I'd settle for the dreaded Slashdot effect. I view punishment as a separate issue from the alleged reimbursement. I bet if all Slashdot readers checked their credit/debit card statements (those that don't, anyway), there would be a lot of surprised faces. I feel like those guys in "Office Space". This company is evil and it must go down. Having said that, financial constraints prevent me from hiring a lawyer. I may have to settle for a class action kind of thing.
These are some other names Webloyalty operates under: Reservation Rewards, WalletShield, Travel Values Plus, and Buyer's Assurance. http://www.webloyalty.com/success_stories.asp These are some companies that they deal with: 1-800-flowers.com, americangreetings.com, classmates.com, coolsavings.com half.com (part of eBay), hotels.com, joann.com, kingsizedirect.com, lillianvernon.com, movietickets.com, myfamily.com, onetravel.com, orbitz.com, priceline.com, riverdeep.com, smartbargains.com, webstakes.com, Brylane Home, Chadwick's, Lane Bryant, MapBlast, MyLotto, MyPoints, SandBox, Time-Life, Walter Drake, ZDNet.
This scam is huge. It got me. Not sure if you'd call it phishing, maybe just unscrupulous activity by the shopping cart provider, but this will rob you just by supplying an email address. http://adam.rosi-kessel.org/weblog/the_man/webloya lty_aka_wli_reservations_is_a_scam.html
I purchased movie tickets from Fandango.com two years ago. Evidently a popup appeared after my transaction offering a discount for filling in a survey (must have been using the girlfriend's Windows box w/ IE). I gave my disposable email address and that became authorization to start charging me a monthly fee. I did not provide my credit card number, other than to Fandango to buy movie tickets. Fandango was nice enough to forward my credit card to this company Reservation Rewards aka Webloyalty. That's all it took.
Read the link above. It's unbelievable that this kind of thing could happen, but these crooks are operating to this date. They have quite a few other names. I've called, complained, and in theory I'm getting completely refunded. When/if I do, I'm going to contest the last two monthly charges ($7 each) and see if I can make them eat a service charge. Just getting my money back wouldn't be enough because probably only a small percent catch what this company does, and those who do may not catch it quickly. If you're the type who doesn't scrutinize your debit card transaction statements, they might be robbing you. At $7 per month, this amount is small enough that it could fly below the radar.
I wonder if http://www.webloyalty.com/ could withstand the slashdot effect? These people need it bad.