Posted on 12/17/2004 3:42:33 PM PST by ecurbh
Nothing is free, apparently including discounts.
It reminds me of those $10 checks the credit card companies send out (which I've never fallen for). The fine print there says that by cashing the check, you are signing up for some extra service that will cost you $10 a month. I guess they hope folks will think it is a rebate or cash back reward of some kind. They are sneaky.
I just bought something from cheaperthandirt.com, where some FReepers might shop for gun-related items, and at the end of the purchase there was a "click here to save $10 on your next purchase" link. So I clicked it and it reminded me of this thread. Here's the information from that page:
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Congratulations...
click YES below to register for Reservation Rewards and get your Money-Saving Discounts up to 50%... plus your $10.00 Cash Back Award!
Thank You... sign up to claim your rewards!
To thank you for your purchase at CheaperThanDirt.com today, click YES below to get your $10.00 Cash Back Award on your next CheaperThanDirt.com purchase plus sign up for all the money-saving benefits of Reservation Rewards, our premier online travel discounts and protection program!
Get your $10.00 Cash Back Award on your next CheaperThanDirt.com purchase just for trying Reservation Rewards plus enjoy all this FREE for the next 30 days...
Discounts up to 50% at leading Retailers you know and trust
Get discounts up to 50% on products and services you use every day from top retailers nationwide like participating Sears Portrait Studios, The Sports Authority, Pearle Vision locations and more. These include nationwide retailers... plus plenty of local stores and service providers right where you live.
Discounts up to 50% at Top Attractions
You save up to 50% at more than 17,000 top attractions nationwide and close to home. Get discounts at theme parks, museums, aquariums, zoos and more. Enjoy discounts at top name locations like Six Flags and many more! Plus save money at lots of local attractions in your hometown and state!
Dining Discounts -- Buy 1 Get 1 FREE
Get great "Buy 1 Get 1 FREE" deals at over 35,000 popular family restaurants and fast food chains. These discounts are great when on a cross-country trip or even in your own neighborhood. Save at popular national chains like participating Pizza Hut, Planet Hollywood, Bennigan's, McDonalds, International House of Pancakes restaurants and many more! Plus save at local restaurants too!
Extra Reward -- $10.00 Cash Back Award on your next CheaperThanDirt.com purchase
As a member of Reservation Rewards you get your $10.00 Cash Back Award good for your next CheaperThanDirt.com purchase. Just make a purchase anytime in the next 3 months, send Reservation Rewards your receipt and Cash Back Award Coupon and we'll send you the Cash! It's that easy and no minimum purchase is required! So, go ahead and save money shopping for your favorite things at CheaperThanDirt.com... get anything you want... it's up to you! Click here for full details on your $10.00 Cash Back Award
So claim all your Reservation Rewards benefits... plus get your $10.00 Cash Back Award! You'll get your $10.00 Cash Back Award Coupon and instructions on the next page so you can access the site and start saving today! Plus we'll send your Membership Kit email to you at your email address. Try all the benefits for the next 30 days FREE and see how much you save! There's no obligation to continue. If you are completely satisfied, do nothing and you'll enjoy ongoing savings for only $9 a month and of course you have our Money-Back Guarantee as described in the Offer Details! You can print out up to 100 discount coupons every year for your favorite places whenever you want!
Plus you get even more than discounts... you also get valuable Travel Protection with Trip Delay Protection, Hotel Over-Booking Protection, 24-Hour Road & Tow Protection and more!
Click here for more benefit information.
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Then at the bottom of the page there is a box with the following information inside it:
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Offer Details:
Get your $10.00 Cash Back Award on your next CheaperThanDirt.com 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 at CheaperThanDirt.com today! If you are 100% satisfied during your trial, do nothing. All your Reservation Rewards discounts and protection 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 CheaperThanDirt.com today. For your convenience Reservation Rewards will use the contact and credit or debit card information you provided to CheaperThanDirt.com today for billing and benefit processing. In the event your monthly membership fee were to ever change, you would be notified before you are billed. Reservation Rewards benefits may be enhanced or modified at any time without prior notice. And, you have our Money Back Guarantee! If at anytime you are not completely satisfied during your trial or thereafter, simply call Reservation Rewards toll free at 1-888-688-5995 to let us know you wish to cancel your monthly membership benefits and that you wish to receive a refund of the current month's fee and owe nothing further. All your benefits and access will then be canceled immediately. All the money you save is yours to keep!
Consent to receive electronic disclosures. Please read carefully and save or print a copy for your records. Reservation Rewards will communicate your benefit and other membership information to you, including payment authorization made by clicking Yes, by electronic communications, including email and electronic postings on our site. Your Membership Kit email will also include a copy of the Offer Details for your convenience. In order to view this membership and benefit information in electronic form, you need to have access to a computer with Internet browser version IE 5.5 or Netscape 4.7 or higher. In order to receive Reservation Rewards you must agree to receive these communications electronically and by clicking Yes you consent to do so. You may withdraw this consent by canceling the service. Of course if you would also like a printed copy of any membership information you can email us at customerservice@reservationrewards.com to request it and we will be happy to send it at no charge. You can update your email address on the Reservation Rewards profile page.
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Beside the box is the following:
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Check this box to accept your $10.00 Cash Back Award plus Reservation Rewards benefits!
By checking here, entering my email address as my electronic signature and clicking YES, I have read and agree to the Offer Details and authorize CheaperThanDirt.com to securely transfer my name, address and credit or debit card information to Reservation Rewards for billing and benefit processing. After a 30-day free trial, my credit or debit card will be charged $9 per month.
Enter your email address here:
Verify email:
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Then there's a big red button that says "YES! Click here now" and below that it says:
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I want my Reservation Rewards discounts plus my $10.00 Cash Back Award!
No thanks, please take me back to CheaperThanDirt.com
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And at the very bottom of the page it says:
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Offer only available to residents of the U.S., Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands and is not available to current Reservation Rewards members. Terms of Service apply. Reservation Rewards is owned and operated by webloyalty.com. All trademarks and or copyrights are the property of their respective owners, and unless otherwise noted, Reservation Rewards is not affiliated with the respective owners. Apple computer users need to print coupons using Netscape Navigator or Communicator. Merchants participating in this program vary by location. Reservation Rewards benefits cannot be accessed via WebTV. Privacy Policy ©2003, webloyalty.com, inc. 20415-1003
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I don't know what was on the Fandango page, but if it's anything like what was on cheaperthandirt.com, it seems like an issue of "read everything before signing on the dotted line." It was pretty clear to me when I read their "Offer Details" that Reservation Rewards was going to be charging my credit card $9 a month whether I ever ordered anything else from cheaperthandirt.com or not.
You're right.... it's clear when you read all that. Obviously I didn't, because I'd never buy into all that. I don't really even have recall of the coupon offer, nor did we get any confirmation emails from Reservation Rewards or any other kind of notification of the 'benefits'.
I still think that legitimate sites ought not advertise or share credit card info with anyone like this who, if they really had a valuable service would advertise it and collect their own credit card info.
Reservation Rewards will communicate your benefit and other membership information to you, including payment authorization made by clicking Yes, by electronic communications, including email and electronic postings on our site. Your Membership Kit email will also include a copy of the Offer Details for your convenience.
This part, however, Reservation Rewards neglected... we never recieved any such "Membership Kit email." If we had, we could have cancelled before we were ever charged in the first place.
bump for good FReeper original article - no copying Washington Post!
I had a similar experience, when shopping at another site.
I agree, that the sites, which allow this deceptive practice should be help responsible for it.
When I called reservations rewards, they did reverse the charges immediately. So call them again.
But what they are doing, in cahoots with a lot of supposedly legitimate merchants, does border on fraud. I wonder who would investigate this, the FBI?
I keep wondering how these people sleep at night.
I've had two Phishing emails about "My eBay Account", which I immediately sent off to abuse@ebay.com.
This is getting out of hand... but what is being done? Are these people being prosecuted?
WLI ReservationRewards is committing fraud via the SmartBargains website as well. Same exact scam as you described.
I noticed the $9.00 charge on my VISA card in my July statement, but WLI has been charging me $9/month since January! Shame on me for not checking my statement more carefully. But SHAME on SmartBargains.com for being complicit in this fraud, and for treating their customers this way.
SmartBargains has lost my business forever, and I'll be posting on as many forums as possible to suggest people BOYCOTT SmartBargains and all other mercants who allow WLI to thieve from their web sites.
As for WLI, I have contacted the CT attorney general's office. Someone needs to shut these scammers down.
Thanks for the warning about SmartBargains, I'll make sure to avoid doing business with them.
After what we went through to get the WLI stuff cancelled and refunded, I am now very careful to check our bank and credit card statements for any unrecognized charges.
I found this FR post by doing a Google search for "reservationrewards fandango".
Guess the bastards are still at it. I got a big pile of hits on that Google search, for several front company names for Reservation Rewards, and for a variety of online vendors in addition to Fandango.
It's so insidious too. They don't even offer any services! We received nothing from them except the charges!
Without a doubt, they automate and facilitate the cancellation as one way of staying below the radar. They take just a little each month from the 90% of the victims who don't realize what's happening, and gladly let the 10% who would be trouble makers off, to avoid further hassles from them.
I just canceled and got a refund for the one month I had paid - all done entirely by automated phone voice menus, something like (from memory, not notes, so likely has errors):
After stepping through the above, my on-line account with them was canceled (I could no longer login), and I immediately received two emails, one for the cancellation and one for the refund. Prior to this, the only email I had ever received from them was the one mentioned below, when I requested my 'forgotten' password. I really doubt that they ever send emails on the initial subscription. I looked closely at all my email from prior to that time to now, and there was no record of anything from them. I've read through the other reports of this ripoff and no one has ever mentioned seeing the initial subscription emails from them.
Prior to this call, I had obtained my member number by trying to login to their website http://home.reservationrewards.com/ using the email address I suspected that they had for me, and a bogus password. This brought up the typical error screen, with the offer to send me my password if I have forgotten it. I requested that, and immediately received an email from them with a password. I logged on to their site with that password, and could see my member number in the upper left corner.
Their first and only charge to my credit card was one month to the day after the Fandango.com transaction off of which they piggy backed. This provides a good way to figure out what transaction they hooked, as they are now working with a wide variety of on-line merchants. Just find the first charge, backup one month, and see from what store(s) you made online purchases that day, give or take a couple of days.
As can be seen on this Yahoo! FAQ web page, they are enabled by default for Yahoo!'s small merchants: Yahoo! Store Promotion & Traffic -- Webloyalty Frequently Asked Questions
From a good post at http://www.teraskasi.net/forum/viewtopic.php?p=3609&sid=efbdb64e91c29aa4a67cd5c6618b8f96 comes the following list of on-line sites alleged to be using this 'service':
fandango.com
movietickets.com
ebay.com
wdrake.com (Walter Drake)
classmates.com
amazon.com
joann.com
jessicalondon.com
travelvalue.com (WLI aka)
travelvalueplus.com (WLI aka)
buyerassurance.com (WLI aka)
reservationrewards.com (WLI aka)
chadwicks.com
orbitz.com
jyfonline
columbiahouse.com
lillianvernon.com
skinstore.com
deepdvddiscount.com
accstation.com
virtualcart.com (shoppingcart - beware of any purchases made through online stores using this shoppingcart)
yahoo stores
expedia.com
priceline.com
ubid.com
onetravel.com
sprint.com
bidz.com
buy.com
1800flowers.com
charlotteflowers.com
priceline.com
mypoints.com
webloyalty.com (WLI)
restaurant.com
dvdplanet.com
cooking.com
allposters.com
musicspace.com
aetv.com
half.com
drugstore.com
jcwhitney.com
hotelreservations.com
lanebryant.com
ccnow.com (shoppingcart - beware of any purchases made through online stores using this shoppingcart)
lernercatalog.com
americangreetings.com
vistaprints.com
gifttree.com
ebags.com
electronicsplus.com
Wow, that's some great information, thanks for posting all of that.
One other site I have seen this 'offer' pop up on is MyDomain.com, where I register all of my domain names. Since I now know what to look out for, I can get past it, but you do have to look very carefully for the "No Thanks" link, which they deliberately make hard to find.
You must have an audiographic memory to be able to recall all that w/o notes.
Thanks for the ping.
Thanks for the information. I've seen the $10 off offer before, just never used it. Now I'll be sure not to.
ping
I wonder if Amazon is showing up because it has a huge sales volume, and people can't always tell for certain which retailer stung them. ReservationRewards doesn't start charging until 30 days after the initial sting, which can fake some people out (so nice of them to make the first 30 days free ;).
They probably shouldn't be on the list... maybe they were involved once, but I don't think they are now. We'd have seen it.
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