SALT LAKE CITY (ABC 4 News) - Next time you make an online purchase be careful what you click yes to. Hundreds of websites make offers for discounts but when you sign up, your credit card may be charged monthly.
Several months ago Edene Gathercole ordered a pizza online with her dad's credit card. Everything seemed fine until Dave Turcotte started noticing recurring charges to his account. His daughter Gathercole says, “You order a pizza thinking that's all you're getting and the next thing you know you've got charges on there for something you didn't know you were being charged for and you would never see.”
Turcotte noticed a 12 dollar charge from "Complete Savings" on August 13th, and another charge the following month. It can happen when you order pizza, electronics, home furnishings, flowers, and much more. Complete Savings has a partnership with 150 websites.
Here’s how it works. When online shoppers complete their orders an offer page will pop up, usually with a discount for their next purchase. Shoppers who don't read the fine print continue on with getting that coupon and end up signing up for a membership with one of these services. If they don't cancel after the 30-day trial the monthly charges rack up.
Turcotte says, “Not everyone's out there trying to grab your money that's not what I’m saying but you need to be cautious.”
Jane Driggs with the Better Business Bureau says this method of getting people's credit card information is legal, but questionable. If you find yourself in a membership you didn't authorize - or don't want to be in - call the company directly to stop the charges, and hopefully get your money back. Driggs says, “They want to take care of it right away so it doesn't start building up and make them have to revise their tactics.”
We called "Webloyalty.com" the parent company for Complete Savings. A spokesperson says, "We realize there was confusion with our membership sign up. In August we began requiring customers to submit the last four digits if their credit card in addition to typing in their email address twice to make it more clear that customers will be charged a membership fee."
There was a class action lawsuit against Webloyalty.com. It was filed in 2006 and settled in August without fault.
