I Got Scammed

As you can tell by my excursion into trading options with a meager amount of money to leverage, I try to optimize my finances. I am also internet savvy, make purchases online, and keep track of checking and credit card spending through justthrive.com. Yesterday, I noticed a charge labeled "Shopper's Discount 800-8898776" for $12 on my debit card. I thought I'd seen it before and looked back at the previous month's statement. Sure enough, there it was again for $12. In all, I'd been charged each of the last 3 months.

A quick google search revealed that it is a prevalent scam, and I found multiple sites with thousands of complaints registered. Apparently to resolve the issue, all you have to do is notice it on your card, call the 800 number, and demand a refund.

My research into how this happened led me to some findings that would make a wonderful business ethics example. When I purchased something from buy.com in January after completing the checkout, I was prompted with an offer to save $10 on my next purchase. All I had to do was type in my e-mail address twice. Of course, I have my yahoo e-mail account for things like this, which I long ago ceded to spam and never check anymore. If I had ever checked my yahoo e-mail account I would have known that by typing my e-mail twice I had actually registered for a shoppers discount savings club, with a 30-day free trial, after which they would bill a monthly membership fee to the card I'd used to make my buy.com purchase.

I'm pretty sure this is why Amazon is eating up e-retail market share. I want to know how much agreeing to this scam run by WebLoyalty Inc. helps buy.com's margins. I wonder if buy.com gets paid everytime a customer sees the ad, whether buy.com gets a commission everytime someone types their e-mail in twice and they send credit card, name, address info off to this credit card leeching company. Or maybe the agreement is even more conniving and buy.com gets a cut of the monthly membership fee. Whatever it is, this is the kind of stuff that kills an online retailer's brand. Any company that agrees to do business with WLI is sacrificing the future of their brand for improved short-term margins. What were the executive's logic at buy.com...O, we can undercut our competitors' prices and maintain our margins with this increased revenue from WLI, which will lead to more market share. No, No, No.

The worst part is that it's all legal, this company WLI, has been very successul. They have gotten start-up awards, and last year recognized over $200 million in revenue. On their site they claim to have over a million members to their various scam clubs. I just feel sorry for all the people having a hard time balancing their budget and can't figure out where all their money goes...