Watch out for this online credit card fraud via Fandango.com!!

I was doing our weekly checkbook balancing this afternoon, when I noticed a $9.00 charge on 12/15 from something called VISA-WLI*RESERVATIONREW800-7327031 CT. It rung a bell, and I remembered seeing a similar charge last month on 11/15. I had not really thought much about that previous charge because my new wife (HairOfTheDog) and I had merged bank accounts the previous week, and I had assumed it was a transaction she had performed and forgotten to write down, or some kind of bank charge related to the changes to our account.

But we now saw that this was fishy, and knew we had not authorized any ongoing charges from any such company. We called our bank, filed a dispute on the charges, and were refunded our $18. The bank said they would follow up with WLI Reservation Rewards to find out where they got our account information and to stop any further charges.

I did some Googling on "WLI Reservation Rewards", and found a number of sites with others detailing similar problems with this company. For example, Rip-off Report.com has 326 reported incidents of this fraud.

Evidently, here is how the scam worked:
-They are associated with a number of seemingly legitimate sites, including Fandango.com, where we had purchased movie tickets on 10/15.
-At the conclusion of the transaction, there was an offer for "$10 off your next purchase". That seemed fine, we planned to use Fandango again.
-Apparently, accepting this offer, which we probably thought was from Fandango, authorized Fandango to give our credit card info to this "WLI Reservation Rewards" and initiate a $9 monthly fee. If we had seen any indication of this at all, there is no way we would have accepted such a thing.

What is this fee for? What does WLI Reservation Rewards do? We have no idea. We never heard anything from this company offering their services. You would think they would at least send out an email saying "Thank you for signing up for our service." Evidently they just lay low and hope you won't notice a measly $9 charge on your account each month.

We called Reservation Rewards, but surprise, there was no answer, just a recording to call back between 8am and 11pm Mon-Fri. OK, but we were calling at 2:30pm Pacific on a Friday! Then we called Fandango, and spoke to their customer service, who we let know in no uncertain terms that their relationship with Reservation Rewards was not acceptable, and that as a result, we would never be using Fandango's services again. Fandango was adamant that they were not responsible for the actions of this "3rd party" company, and we assured them that yes, they are responsible for $10-off offers appearing during the purchase process on their own site.

Bottom line, if you are using Fandango, stop. Watch your bank statements for monthly charges from "WLI*RESERVATIONREW800-7327031". Also remember that Reservation Rewards is associated with other online services (see the link above for more customer reports).If you see this type of charge appear on your statement, contact your bank immediately to dispute the charge.

HEY! Action report! This is a bit of a surprise because I never contacted the RESERVATION REWARDS people directly by phone (got voice mail and hung up) or by email, but they have sent me an email. I cancelled it through my bank and wrote the angry email to Fandango, not RR. We posted this thread, and wrote the CA authorities Corin listed at 28. One of the things we did has given us action. No response from Fandango to me, but here is the response from RR.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

This notice confirms that your membership in Reservation Rewards has been cancelled and we have issued a refund of your membership fee. This refund will appear as a credit in your credit card, debit card or PayPal account within the next 3-5 business days.

We are sorry to see you go and hope you reconsider becoming a member again in the future. Any money you've saved is yours to keep... and thank you for trying our service!

Please let us know if your request was resolved to your satisfaction. All responses submitted will go to our Customer Service Director for review because your feedback is important to us.

Sincerely,

The Reservation Rewards Team
customerservice@reservationrewards.com
1-888-688-5995

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Complaining loudly works! I am still considering my response to them, I appreciate their willingness to refund without a fight, but that does not forgive the fact that they tried to hit me with stealthy unwanted charges in the first place.

We recieved a response from Fandango this AM:

Dear [HairOfTheDog],
Thank you for contacting us and taking the time to voice your concerns. Hearing from our customers is invaluable to improving our service.

We are sorry that you were frustrated by one of our advertiser's offers. We work closely with Reservation Rewards to ensure our customers are fully aware of the extent of their offer and how to qualify for the $10.00 cash back incentive. To view the offer from our confirmation page, customers must click the offer button that specifies:
"By clicking above, you can claim your reward from the reward provider, Reservation Rewards."
The terms of the membership are then listed on the offer page (under "Offer Details"), which includes the following:
Get your $10.00 Cash Back Award after your next Fandango purchase, Money-Saving Discounts FREE for the next 30 days plus all the valuable benefits of Reservation Rewards, with our compliments. It's a Special Reward for your purchase today! If you are 100% satisfied during your trial, do nothing. All your Reservation Rewards protection and discounts will automatically continue for just $9 a month billed by Reservation Rewards to the credit card or deducted from the debit card you used at Fandango today. For your convenience Reservation Rewards will use the contact and credit or debit card information you provided to Fandango today for billing and benefit processing.

In addition, just above the blank fields requiring your email address, the following is listed:
"By entering my email address as my electronic signature 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."
Please be aware that the entire program and how to receive the cash back incentive is explained prior to any request for commitment and requires you to enter and confirm your email address and click on the red Yes! acceptance button that points to the full offer.

We apologize for the misunderstanding and will continue to work closely with all our advertisers and affiliates to ensure that the ads on our website are clear to our customers. We contacted Reservation Rewards to confirm your membership was cancelled and all charges to your account have been refunded. They have provided us with the following details:
Name: [redacted]
Email: [redacted]
Join Date: 10/13/2004
Cancel Date: 12/18/2004
# of Billings: 2
Refunded: 2 credits of $9.00 each
Confirmation#: [redacted]
Member was sent email confirmation.
Thanks again for your email and please be assured that your comments will be forwarded to Fandango's management team.
Sincerely,
Indra Kumaran
Manager, Fandango Customer Support

Best Regards,
Chris
Fandango Customer Support
NOTE: Please do not click the reply button. E-mails sent to this address are not read.

Our response to Fandango:

Thank you for your response, I did receive the notification from Reservations Rewards. However... in the spirit of your comment "We work closely with Reservation Rewards to ensure our customers are fully aware of the extent of their offer" I would say this.... It isn't clear what benefit RR even brings to the table, and would I never agree to something as ridiculous as a monthly fee to get coupons, so on this both you and they have failed to be clear. I never received anything from them, ever... Not the $10 off (I don't even know how that was supposed to work) nor any notification that I belonged to anything.

Fandango offers a good service. You've wrecked it by accepting advertising money from a rip off company that can only detract from you and make people angry.

Have you deleted my credit card information from all your databases, and removed me from all email lists? I requested that you do that. If in the future, I find out you have ended your relationship with this company AND have instituted a policy of NOT advertising with rip off companies AND have a policy of not sharing customer's credit card info with them with only an email 'signature' (yeesh) perhaps I will do business with you again. Reputable companies offering good products will sell themselves, they can collect their own credit card information in a clear sale situation, they won't have to hide their charges in your coat-tails.

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