Leo Laporte These are the web affinity companies that are being investigated right now by the U.S. Senate and Tuesday they had hearings and rightly so, these companies are appalling.
Becky Worley This is a pretty interesting consumer story, basically on certain website during the check out portion of your purchasing; a pop up window comes up. And it’s very confusing for some consumers where this pop up comes from; and if you enter certain amounts of information, your credit card number…
Leo Laporte Certain amounts? Your email! That’s all you need to do!
Becky Worley Minimal, minimal.
Leo Laporte I’ve had this happened. So you go to orbitz.com, 800 flowers, they’ve all stopped it because of the heat.
Becky Worley Continental, they said I think was one.
Leo Laporte Continental Airlines. There are companies that have made more than $10 million because they share with these so-called “affinity” – web affinity companies. So what happens is you buy something – I’ve had it happen at Buy.com, and before you, before the check out is done, it says, ‘hey great, thank you so much, would you like a coupon for your next purchase? Enter your email address.’ They don’t say clearly anything else, they don’t say by entering your email address, you are doing anything. But in the fine print if you were to read it, it says ‘by giving us your email address, you are signing up for a monthly charge to our loyalty program.’ You get nothing for it. They charge you between nine and $12 a month on your credit card, they know most people don’t read their credit card statement.
And this is the creepy part. You’ve only given them the email address; Buy.com gives them the credit card information.
Becky Worley This is the kicker for me because like the token piece of advice for anyone purchasing online is, so long as you don’t give your credit card information…
Leo Laporte How are they going to charge?
Becky Worley …you won’t be charged. And so that violates that singular premise of safety, that your credit card number isn’t violated and as the consumer you can assume that upstanding companies will protect that, but the fact that real, legitimate companies are sharing your credit card number with a scammy, loyalty program is unforgivable.
Leo Laporte Appalling.
John C. Dvorak Well, not only is everybody in bed with each other but don’t forget the banks are part of the scam.
Leo Laporte Yeah, because they make a percentage too.
John C. Dvorak Yeah, but if you try to take this charge off your account or you – you can’t get rid of…
Leo Laporte It’s recurring.
John C. Dvorak You can’t get rid of it. And you say ‘hey, I want to stop this – well, we can’t really do that because when it comes in we have to pay it.’ And the banks will not actually help you at all. The banks are the lowest form of scum when it comes to this sort of thing.
Becky Worley That has not been – I didn’t have one of these particular recurring charges.
John C. Dvorak There are a bunch of – well the recurring ones are impossible to get rid of.
Leo Laporte Here’s the deal. If you say, cancel from now on, it’s not so hard. If you say, I didn’t know about this. I don’t want to pay for this. I have been doing for a year without my knowledge, good luck, because you are not going to get that money back. That’s really hard to get back. And I think you’re right there…
John C. Dvorak They know what’s going on.
Leo Laporte They know what’s going – everybody knows what’s going on. In fact in the Senate investigation, it was very clear that this worked because the web loyalty companies knew that no one knew they were getting charged and, sad to say, the merchants did. Classmates.com has earned more than $70 million in revenues.
Becky Worley Well, they are so – I don’t know.
Leo Laporte They are scammy to begin with. I am not going back to – these are the sites I will never do business with again.
John C. Dvorak Well, let’s name them.
Leo Laporte 800flowers.com, buy.com, classmates.com, Columbia House, Confi-Check, get ready for this one, this makes me sick because I use them all the time, expedia.com and hotels.com, Fandango, FTD, Hotwire, [ph] Incuite, Telios (08:29), MovieTickets.com, Orbitz, Priceline, Redcats, Shutterfly, Travelocity, US Airways and Vistaprint.
Becky Worley Hello, Kayak.
Leo Laporte They are gone.
Becky Worley There’s nobody else.
Leo Laporte Kayak – well, the problem with Kayak is it then sends you to those sites. Those are the companies that made over $10 million.
Becky Worley That is so bad.
Leo Laporte Companies, it’s even worse. I hate to tell you. The companies that are doing, or did it, they partnered with Affinion, Webloyalty or Vertrue and they made between one and $10 million, include Yahoo!, Victoria’s Secret, TigerDirect.
Becky Worley John, what are you going to do?
Leo Laporte Pizza Hut, Lillian Vernon.
Becky Worley No Victoria’s Secret! John!
John C. Dvorak Everybody knows that I buy stuff at discount houses.
Leo Laporte eHarmony, Barnes & Noble, BizRate.com, these guys are all …
Becky Worley You only hit the Bs. Wow.
Leo Laporte That’s just the Bs! So there’s a link – CNET did a great article on this and there’s a link at the bottom – we’ll put it in our show notes.
Becky Worley I got to pitch this story. This is a great – this is a classic consumer story.
John C. Dvorak So I think a better thing to list, who is not part of this scam?
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