BEWARE
Complaint
BRH
Country: United States
SCAM! SCAM! SCAM!
By Brian Hall, 36 minutes ago | Country: United States
Unbelievably, I discovered that my Wachovia bank account was being charged $19.95 per month by Best Benefits. I immediately went into the bank and stopped the charges, and had them call the 800 number to find out what was going on. I received a letter from them, with Wachovia Insurance Agency referred, telling me that the card attached would attract discounts at my local pharmacies; doctors, etc., but stated very clearly that "THIS IS NOT INSURANCE". To test their claims, I visited the Pharmacies, and doctors that they had identified in my area, and, surprise, surprise, no one had heard of this offer. I had told my bank to cancel their charges, but, lo and behold, another charge came through last week. Went back to the bank,to be told by the Best Benefit representative on the phone, that they would mail a "letter of dispute" form for me to complete to enable them to provide details of their solicitation, and our commitment. My wife and I would NEVER agree to something like this over the phone, and certainly not divulge our bank details. They are now into me for $120+, but it is my plan to take whatever documents I receive (if I do) to my lawyer, and even if it costs $500, I intend to nail them to the wall over this!!! BEWARE, FOLKS.
By Brian Hall, 36 minutes ago | Country: United States
Unbelievably, I discovered that my Wachovia bank account was being charged $19.95 per month by Best Benefits. I immediately went into the bank and stopped the charges, and had them call the 800 number to find out what was going on. I received a letter from them, with Wachovia Insurance Agency referred, telling me that the card attached would attract discounts at my local pharmacies; doctors, etc., but stated very clearly that "THIS IS NOT INSURANCE". To test their claims, I visited the Pharmacies, and doctors that they had identified in my area, and, surprise, surprise, no one had heard of this offer. I had told my bank to cancel their charges, but, lo and behold, another charge came through last week. Went back to the bank,to be told by the Best Benefit representative on the phone, that they would mail a "letter of dispute" form for me to complete to enable them to provide details of their solicitation, and our commitment. My wife and I would NEVER agree to something like this over the phone, and certainly not divulge our bank details. They are now into me for $120+, but it is my plan to take whatever documents I receive (if I do) to my lawyer, and even if it costs $500, I intend to nail them to the wall over this!!! BEWARE, FOLKS.
Comments
https://complaintwire.org/Complaint.aspx/VWSyVmKsGgAYCgjMQ9jzow
https://complaintwire.org/Complaint.aspx/ADhWA584vABDlgjMTIdaIw
https://complaintwire.org/Complaint.aspx/NqDkBoRjXACFegjMCzUH7Q
https://complaintwire.org/Complaint.aspx/E8ajPYe97wDb9AjM8KJdyg
https://complaintwire.org/Complaint.aspx/x4KBV3nGaAAEFwjM1WJoNg
https://complaintwire.org/Complaint.aspx/pHkAZH-5PQCalwjMekKDlA
The company behind this is Vertrue, aka Adaptive Marketing. Any unexpected charges showing up on your accounts labeled "MVQ<something>" are from them.
Supposedly, according to BBB, they will give your money back if you ask, while denying they did anything wrong.
http://www.bbb.org/nebraska/business-reviews/ ... ha-ne-107000028
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BBB Rating for Vertrue, Inc.
Based on BBB files, Vertrue, Inc. has a BBB Rating of F on a scale from A+ to F.
Reasons for this rating include:
Government action(s) against business.
Business has failed to resolve underlying cause(s) of a pattern of complaints.
Complaints reported to the Bureau primarily involve claims of unauthorized charges by the Company's affiliates. In such cases, customers reported no recollection of having agreed to the programs that were billed to their credit card, debit card or bank account.
The company has responded to all complaints offering a full unconditional refund for such unauthorized charges, while also denying that any of its charges were not authorized by the customers. The company has stated that, with the consent of its customers, its practice is to tape record telephone transactions, including the terms of the agreement with the customer. The company asserts that the audio tapes clearly reveal that all customers are fully aware that their credit card, or other forms of payment, will be charged for the program if it is not cancelled within the trial period.
...
Government Actions
The following describes a government action that has been resolved by either a settlement or a decision by a court or administrative agency. If the matter is being appealed, it will be noted below.
Polk County, Iowa District Court Judge Robert A. Hutchison has ruled that Vertrue Inc. used deceptive and unfair practices to market so-called "buying club" memberships to almost half a million Iowans over the last twenty years, for over $36 million in revenue.
The State lawsuit, which alleged violations of the Iowa Consumer Fraud Act and Iowa's Buying Club Law, was tried Oct. 26-Nov. 5, 2009, in a bench trial before Judge Hutchison, who issued a 62-page ruling late last week finding that Vertrue and its subsidiary companies, Adaptive Marketing LLC and Idaptive Marketing LLC, were liable for consumer fraud.
Hutchison ruled that over two decades Vertrue had used deceptive and unfair techniques to enroll consumers in memberships and charge their credit cards, often without the consumers' knowledge. Consumers often made monthly or annual payments for memberships they were not aware of - and sometimes kept paying for years.
In this decision, Hutchison determined "liability" - that the Vertrue companies violated Iowa consumer protection laws. Next he will determine the "remedy," such as restitution or penalties, in a separate proceeding to be scheduled soon.
Hutchison noted that Vertrue's total Iowa membership revenues over a twenty-year period exceeded $36 million, even after previous refunds to consumers were subtracted.
..."
This is basically a cramming scam, where they get your account number, often from marketing partners you may have done business with, and start cramming small monthly charges, supposedly for "discount memberships", "credit protection", "identity protection", "health discount plans", "accident insurance", etc. The charges are small enough, and with innocuous names possibly similar to other normal charges, that many people may not catch them for months to years. What, exactly, does "Best Benefits" sound like?
There are several companies running this type of scam, and apparently they are raking in hundreds of millions of dollars a year, which they split with their bank or merchant "marketing partners".
The Senate Commerce Committee held hearings on these scams last year, demanding information from the major credit card companies on complaints associated with such scams, and in response, for example, VISA tightened up its rules on disclosure of offer terms and transfer of account information between merchants as a result. Cramming complaints have largely shifted to fraudulent charges to checking accounts as a result.
The New York Attorney General also went after several, along with their marketing partners, and recently reached settlements providing for millions in refunds.
In your case, it appears that your bank, Wachovia (part of Wells Fargo), passed your account information to this company, allowing them to "sell" you this "health discount plan", or to charge you without even obtaining your authorization, since they already had your account information from your own bank.
Wachovia got embroiled in a major telemarketing fraud scandal a few years ago, before they merged with Wells Fargo. Apparently, some of their managers had fraudulent telemarketing customers with absurd fraud complaint levels, and they failed to cut them off due to the lucretive chargeback fees. They ultimately settled for nearly $150 million in fines and refunds to defrauded consumers.
http://chuckgallagher.wordpress.com/2008/05/0 ... marketer-fraud/
There has been a high level of fraud associated with such "products", not only due to their "unsuitability" or downright worthlessnes, as you found, but because the telemarketing is often done by third party call centers with incentives to make "sales" at any cost, while they have account information that allows them to log a sale regardless of whether they even talked to the alleged customer.
Some such companies report "retention rates" below 20%, and some studies have found that MOST consumers contacted did not know they had supposedly signed up for the alleged "product" and almost none had actually had any benefit from them.
Even though FTC requires special telemarketing rules in such cases with "pre-acquired account information", including recording of the whole call including the entire offer, and specifically recording of the consumer saying the last 4 digits of the account number, this has not been sufficient to stop fraud by telemarketers, through misrepresentations, claiming you were agreeing "to receive information" which they fraudulently use as your "authorization" for charges, fabricated doctored, or edited "authorization recordings", use of false and deceptive statements to divert consumer disputes, phony promises to "cancel" or "refund", followed by continuing charges (deception by confusion), and many other ploys. One study found that over 90% of one company's "customer service" calls dealt with disputes and cancellations.
You can find reports of many deceptive telemarketing tactics in connection with bank-associated preacquired account information cramming fraud, here:
https://complaintwire.org/Complaint.aspx/tYc4K1wNsACmMAjLZ-BuTg
A number of banks have been sued in connection with fraud by these "comarketers" perpetrated on their customers. Citi and Chase reached settlements with state Attorneys General, and BofA has had several class action lawsuits filed against it along with its partner insurance companies, "identity protection" companies, and telemarketers.
Every year you are required to be sent a Privacy Statement from your bank notifying you that you can "opt-out" of disclosure by your bank of your financial information to affiliate or third party marketers. For increased protection from this sort of fraud, OPT-OUT! (California law makes "opt-out" the default.)
Your best chance to get your money back is to file a fraud dispute with your bank, as well as with BBB, FTC, and your state Attorney General. Do so immediately, since banks that are partners in this racket often claim they only have to reverse 60 days of charges, or claim they have no connection with the scam. You should also close the account or block the card number due to fraud, although with bank partnered fraud, the unauthorized monthly charges often start rolling over to the new account number, since they have access to your account information through your own bank.
Follow up by sending your bank fraud dispute IN WRITING, mailed certified, and insist that they send you a fraud affidavit so you can fill out and send that. On top of FTC and AG complaints, file a fraud and theft complaint with your local police, and get a copy of the police report. Again, do all this IMMEDIATELY, so you have proof that notice was delivered, by dates provable by certified mail, since they will often claim they "never knew".
If you have any problems, file a complaint against your bank with the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, at www.occ.gov
In addition, you should know that under federal law the statute of limitations for suing merchants who do not return unauthorized charges is 1 year. The 60 day dispute period, that they will try to brush you off with, is just the FRB Reg. E or FCBA dispute periods after which your bank can't normally be held responsible for the loss, although your bank's violation of its fiduciary duty to you might nullify that limit.
The whole scheme is based on making it too much trouble to get your money back for the amount involved, so raise the stakes immediately in terms of possible investigation or legal action if you expect to get your money. They are playing Poker, so you play brinksmanship.
In short, treat this as the fraud and theft that it is, since both the marketer and your own bank may try to just sweep it under the rug, blaming you for "forgetting" or not checking your statements carefully, etc. The whole scheme was designed to slip charges by consumers.
You already know you didn't sign up, but you didn't even receive this worthless card until you disputed the charges.
They are not calling it "insurance" because that would put them under the jurisdiction of state insurance commissioners. State laws often require that sellers of insurance be licensed brokers, and that they have a duty to ensure the "suitability" of their product to the consumers they sell it to. They might get nailed, for example, for selling "unemployment insurance" to someone who is disabled, already unemployed, and inelligible for any benefits under the terms of the policy. (That very issue came up in one of the BofA class actions.)
"To test their claims, I visited the Pharmacies, and doctors that they had identified in my area, and, surprise, surprise, no one had heard of this offer. "
Their representation was fraudulent, on top of their unauthorized charges in the first place. File complaints with FTC and your state Attorney General. FTC announced a couple weeks ago that they are cracking down on fraudulent "health discount card" scams, in concert with a number of state AGs.
"I had told my bank to cancel their charges, but, lo and behold, another charge came through last week."
Disputes of electronic charges to your checking account, whether debit card, ACH or other EFT, are covered by FRB Reg. E.
The Reg. E dispute rules are that the dispute date for determining whether the dispute is "timely" (within 60 days) is as of the date the bank was notified and SHOULD HAVE BEEN AWARE of the possibility of fraud, whether by phone, walking in the door, or mail, and if by mail, "constructive notice" is as of the DATE of MAILING.
Even if they never get it, pretend they never got it, ignore it, carefully "lose" it, the mail truck fell into the river, or whatever! That is why you mail your WRITTEN DISPUTE "certified".
"Went back to the bank,to be told by the Best Benefit representative on the phone, that they would mail a "letter of dispute" form for me to complete to enable them to provide details of their solicitation, and our commitment."
This tactic is commonly reported when a scammer is attempting to string out your dispute past the dispute window while they continue to charge you, by having you wait for their "form". There is no reason to wait for a form from who you know made the unauthorized charge in the first place TO FILE A FRAUD DISPUTE WITH YOUR BANK, yet they are both diverting you away from doing that. They set this scheme up, and they know all the rules of the game better than you do. The form may never come, yet it would all look like an "innocent mistake", but still "your fault" so your loss.
The bank typically has an incentive to ignore their legal obligations and go along with this, in the form of the terms of their marketing contract with the scammer, which typically says that they will first send customer disputes directly to the company, so they never appear as "disputes" or chargebacks at all, and aren't even visible to their own auditors.
"My wife and I would NEVER agree to something like this over the phone, and certainly not divulge our bank details."
Nor would most of the consumer who complain about this type of scam. Many people have perfectly adequate health insurance through their employers, yet have found similar charges showing up on their accounts. You wouldn't have had to divulge your bank details if your bank passed them directly.
"They are now into me for $120+, but it is my plan to take whatever documents I receive (if I do) to my lawyer, and even if it costs $500, I intend to nail them to the wall over this!!!"
And they will be into you even more with each passing month as long as they have a way of sticking charges to your account.
Don't wait for any "documents" you receive. Other consumer reports involving similar scams indicate that if they ever got any "proof", they got anything from excerpts of some phone call misrepresented to be an authorization, recordings of their voice edited into a script they never heard, a written "transcript" (not a recording) passed off as what supposedly was said, just more unsupported assertions, nothing at all, or after months they finally acknowledged they "couldn't find the recording. The system must have malfunctioned".
Note that in all these scenarios, THERE IS NO CONSEQUENCE TO ANY FRAUD. They get to produce whatever "proof" they think will make you go away, or might convince your bank that you are just some "forgetful" customer, or even nothing at all, but in no case will anyone be arrested or prosecuted even for entirely fraudulent acts. They could produce a recording that doesn't even sound like you, and still walk away without any consequences by just saying "it must be a mistake", or "maybe we called the wrong number".
With "verification" like that, is it any wonder that fraud occurs?
It's a sucker's game, rigged from the start.
http://www.prweb.com/releases/2014/03/prweb11669196.htm
Class Action Lawsuit Filed Against Vertrue, MasterCard, MyLife.com, Oak Investment, and Others Regarding Allegedly Fraudulent “Membership" Fees for Bogus "Savings Clubs"
Class Action Lawsuit Filed Against Vertrue, MasterCard, MyLife.com, Oak Investment, and Others Regarding Allegedly Fraudulent “Membership" Fees for Bogus "Savings Clubs"
Lawsuit claims that Defendants profit from charging consumers fraudulent fees for savings club “memberships”
Atlanta, GA (PRWEB) March 13, 2014
Atlanta law firm Webb, Klase & Lemond, LLC has filed a class action lawsuit against Vertrue, Inc., Adaptive Marketing, LLC, Velo Holdings, MasterCard International, Inc., MyLife.com, Inc., and Oak Investment Partners. The suit states that Vertrue partners with MyLife.com and other deceptive online businesses to trick consumers into unknowingly joining Vertrue’s “consumer savings clubs.”
According to the lawsuit, most club “members” never make use of their savings club “memberships” and cancel their subscriptions immediately upon learning of the fraudulent charges. According to the lawsuit, MasterCard earns fees by processing Vertrue’s charges while knowing they are fraudulent and processing such plainly illegitimate charges violates MasterCard’s agreements.
The lawsuit further states that Vertrue’s parent company, Velo Holdings, and MyLife.com’s investor-owner Oak Investment Partners, which invested $25 million in MyLife in 2007, also participate in Vertrue’s improper practices. The case, Chi v. Vertrue, Inc., et al., was filed in the United States District Court of the Northern District of Georgia, Atlanta Division, on February 28, 2014 and has been given case number 1:14-cv-00614-TWT.
The lawsuit proposes a class action on behalf of all consumers nationally who have been harmed by these practices.
The new complaint alleges that Vertrue’s “savings clubs,” administered by its subsidiaries such as Adaptive Marketing, LLC, include At Home Rewards, At Home Rewards+, BusinessMax, Cross Country Savings, DealMax, Home Savings Mall, Food and Flix, Getaway and Save, Leisure Exclusives, My Great Deals, Passport to Fun, Passport to Fun+, SavingsAce, SavingSmart, Shopping Essentials, Shopping Essentials+, Simply You, Today’s Escapes, Today’s Escapes+, ValueMax, and Your Savings Club.
The lawsuit states that when consumers purchase goods and services from MyLife.com and Vertrue’s other online partners they encounter confusing, obscured ads for Vertrue’s “savings clubs.” Consumers click through these ads without realizing that they have accidentally “joined” one of Vertrue’s clubs, according to the lawsuit. The lawsuit also states that consumers who accidentally join Vertrue’s clubs are charged recurring monthly fees of $20 or more until they affirmatively cancel their “memberships.” Vertrue’s entire business model is based around this deceptive practice, and Vertrue’s co-conspirators, including MasterCard, knowingly facilitate and profit from Vertrue’s fraudulent activities. The lawsuit states that MasterCard approves such unauthorized charges, and profits from them, even though this violates MasterCard’s own rules regarding protection of private customer credit card data.
The suit asserts that the other Defendants are vital to the improper billing scheme. First, Vertrue transmits a consumer’s credit card data to the related credit card network, which the complaint alleges was MasterCard. MasterCard verifies the consumer’s identity and, the lawsuit states, analyzes the transaction to determine whether it is fraudulent. MasterCard transmits the relevant data to the cardholder’s issuing bank which, if it authorizes the charge, sends a verification message to MasterCard, which then informs the issuing bank that the charge has been authorized, according to the suit. The suit claims that the issuing bank then informs Vertrue of the authorization, at which point the purchase is completed and the issuing bank and MasterCard subsequently “clear” and “settle” all of Vertrue’s charges for that day, at which point the illicitly obtained funds are sent to Vertrue. The suit contends that all the Defendants are well aware of the illegal scheme, but they nonetheless participate in order to obtain substantial transaction fees.
Vertrue is a subsidiary of Velo Holdings, an investment group also named as a Defendant in the lawsuit, that acquired Vertrue in 2007. According to the lawsuit, Velo and Oak Investment, MyLife.com’s senior investor-owner, were fully aware that Vertrue’s business model relied on consumer fraud when they acquired their positions in these online companies. The suit asserts that these investors nevertheless controlled, participated in, and profited from Vertrue and MyLife for years while doing nothing to curb the companies’ highly illegal business practices.
If you have unknowingly joined one of Vertrue’s savings clubs and wish to discuss this action, or if you have any questions concerning this press release, please contact Webb, Klase & Lemond by e-mail at contact@WebbLLC.com or by calling (770) 444-9325. Webb, Klase & Lemond, LLC is a law firm that practices complex litigation with a focus on litigation arising from wrongful deprivations by corporate and government entities.