Posted on 12/17/2004 3:42:33 PM PST by ecurbh
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.
happened to me in 2002. Through fandango, I was signed up and billed for Cleverisland.com at $20 a month.
Called them and it was resolved.
This is fraud, and these jokers at fandango need to be hammered.
Yeah - I suspect you're right that Amazon shouldn't be here.
I know the date, cause I was stationed in Alaska at the time.
I used fandango to see a movie.
The Cleverisland site is a child learning site. I have no children, so I got the money refunded pretty quickly.
The Mummy Returns (2001)
My bad. It was actually 2001.
I never used Fandango again.
These DMA/IAB members pushing "incent/rewards/spam/telemarketing" are pitching the shopping cart hosting companies to plug in their scripts on the final checkout pages of 100% of their merchnats. Their friggin applications capture the Credit card and customer info on the cart cookie pass through dumping all the privacy info through to the Adwhores.
The small merchant isn't clued into what really happens and the privacy peddling Adwhore operator spins to them they offer the customer some coupon or rebate % off deal upon the next trip the captured customer makes to the merchants site. (reward company pays the vaporware spiff) Meanwhile they gang rape the customer with spams -telephone calls and re-sell the scraped info to every source willing to pay for it. The customer scratches his head and wonders how these stangers got him,his credit history,cc and phone# on their marketing list.
The ecatelog/cart Hosting company gets a share without doing a damn thing and poo-poo it as a great FREE incentive for repeat business back to their merchant/client. Basically its a under the table payment for syphoning off the customer info of every merchant transaction hosted at places like Americart. I wrote all the cart hosting companies I deal with putting in a notice that a carbon was going to the FTC and FBI to see if CC theft, CAN-SPAM and ID theft laws were being violated.
The Merchant has to specifically OPT-OUT in writing to keep their customer info from falling into the hands of the 3rd party direct marketing firms. I feel your anger Andrew and the Adwhore spin machine (Host company/reward company) made the senerio look like a win-win situation in their short sweet smoke screen e-mail notice. Let's see if some of the FEDs can sniff out a fox in the hen house.
Thanks for the ping.
jm
Yeah it is a rip off. Tried to cancel before the 30 day trial period and they dont let you. They told me I signed up. No I wanted my 10 buck coupon. They already had my credit card number from the ticket purchase and to my surprise HAHA I got dinged 9 bucks. Read other posts and the lawers have fought these cases. They should rename themselves fandswindle
There is no way I would have gone ahead if I had known I would be charged every month. There’s a class action lawsuit against them for this nonsense. Not that I’m a big fan of lawyers, but I hope they nail these people.
I to have just noticed a $12.00 charge from Reservations Rewards via Fandango. I called both to voice my objections and get the money refunded to my account which they say they will do. This was an unauthorized charge. In fact, I DID NOT sign up for this free offer. Fandango said I must have if my personal information was forwarded to Reservation Rewards, but my experience with Fandango was not such a great one that I felt I would use them again in the future, so I did not choose to participate in the program or offer. That being said, I think it doesn’t matter if you opt to participate or not... either way the information does get shared with Reservations rewards.
I am now sending a complaint to the BBB, the FTC (Fair Trade Commission) and the State Attorney General’s office here in Oregon. If you have had a similar experience, you should do the same!
Scott Harder, Portland Oregon
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