Buyer Beware

[awaterlily 0]

Sry for that - tried to copy and paste....and it wouldn't let me.

Just want to share some information.

As a Shutterfly member, in the beginning of January, we took advantage of an e-mail offer we received for a free photo calandar, although had to pay shipping - not an issue. The calendar was very nice.

That said, on 2/1 we found an erroneous charge on our credit card for $12 from some company called "WLI reservationrewards". Not sure what this was, I googled it and got pages and pages of hits for complaints about this company, including one for a law suit filed in the state of Massachusetts.

Apparently, these guys hook in through shopping carts of online retailers like shutterfly - some retailers are unaware of it because they outsource the shopping cart feature. Sometimes a pop up ad will appear saying you get a $10 reward by entering your email address (twice). --we were never prompted via pop up to get a reward—

So, I called this company, webloyalty.com dba as wli reservationrewards company, based out of Connecticut, and, funny, the first automated option was to cancel membership, which I did. Then, called back to speak to a rep to find out how they got our cc info - that's how we learned it was via shutterfly. I also told them to never bill us again and they do not have permission to sell or lease our personal information. Can you believe this - the guy still tried to sell me this membership again!

Next, I called shutterfly - who said, yes, they are our affiliate. I let them know that although we loved our calendar, we will not be doing business with them again and we're extremely disappointed that they would do business with this kind of company. I told the lady to google this company and see for herself the thousands of complaints - why would you want a business relationship with a company that has very questionable business practices??

The best marketing is by word of mouth

Well, here's my word of mouth

Lastly, I filed a complaint with the Connecticut Better business bureau, which currently has 1065 registered complaints and will be filing complaint today with the Federal Trade Commission.

I urge you check your credit card statements carefully, these guys hook in through shopping carts of reputable companies like shutterfly, flowers.com, expedia, autoparts, etc....again, please feel free to google them. Some people complained they were unknowingly billed every month for months or even a year. Monthly charges ranged from $9-$12/mo.

I'm one angry customer.

Protect yourself. Protect your privacy.

[Mina76 0]

Hi Awaterlily,

Just read your message and I didn't know this!

Thank you for the warning,

Mina

[Kathryn41 3,205]

Thank you for this warning. We had a variation on this scam happen with my husband's credit card. He got a call from the bank asking to verify an item since it was outside of his usual buying habits. He checked it and found out it was a fraudulent claim. He then checked very thoroughly through his statement and found 3 other similar items - two of them for $1 each and the third for 19.99. He checked on line and found out that the $1 items were linked with a fraud whereby they try to get small insignificant charges through, and if you don't challenge them, they keep increasing the amounts charged or hit you with something really big. Anyway, he notified the bank, they cancelled his card and issued him a new one, and he checks carefully each month for unauthorized charges. The bank didn't know how the unauthorized users got the account but figure it was through a legitimate purchase.