unauthorized shipment
Complaint
kate carter
Country: United States
same exact dates of charges as seen on previous posts here: publicationsmax. com $79 11/27/09 and shopcoffeedirect.com $79 12/2/09. We did not order anything! both sent mug and bag of coffee unauthorized. there was not a packing slip with either one. One of the packages had a "customer service" phone number to call for cafe saporito.....message left x3 with no call back. What a scam! I figured out which card was used,called to get the process of disputing charges underway and canceled the credit card.
kate port angeles
kate port angeles
Comments
FTC, VISA, and BBB announcement that VISA has cut off about 100 scammers pulling fraudulent "negative option" automatic billing scams.
http://news.moneycentral.msn.com/provider/pro ... 217&id=10896570
"Visa cuts off 100 merchants for scamming consumers
December 17, 2009 8:00 AM ET
By EILEEN AJ CONNELLY
NEW YORK (AP) - Visa Inc. has cut off 100 scammers who use bogus marketing techniques to dupe consumers in the past six months.
Among the most common hustles: billing the credit cards of customers who thought they were getting free trial products like dietary supplements or teeth whiteners $79.95 per month or more, and then making them jump through hurdles to get the charges to stop.
"We've been monitoring this situation from this past summer in particular," said William M. Sheedy, a Visa group president. The number of complaints from cardholders who disputed ongoing charges they never agreed to shot up, although the merchants and the products they sold often varied.
While there are always a handful of complaints about merchants, most are resolved quickly. But in the case of the ongoing charges, it was clear the problem was widespread. "Consumers are being fleeced," Sheedy said.
Visa told The Associated Press that about 100 merchants had their payment processing terminated because of chronic complaints since early summer. The scam is so common, the San Francisco payment processor is teaming up with the Federal Trade Commission and the Better Business Bureau to alert consumers.
..."
This would be a good time to file an FTC complaint, as they may be finally waking up to the scope of this pervasive scam, after YEARS.
This has attracted people who have taken advantage of this weakness in bank and credit card fraud detection to build "businesses" based on deceptive advertizing of "free trial offers", cramming, and intentional poorly disclosed negative-option automatic billing practices, on top of deceptive marketing of overpriced or worthless products.
This case from 1999 involving about $45 million in fraudulent charges, shows that you don't even need a product to slip through massive quantities of small charges.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/3078814
The criminal operation reported here, probably based in eastern Europe or Russia, has been stealing money through stolen credit card numbers for years, hiding by just limiting the amounts to the $5 to $10 range, and usng multiple "front" company names set up by suckers in the U.S. There has been very little law enforcement action against them or their U.S. "partners".
http://www.dslreports.com/forum/r19620593-Ebo ... DigitalAgePluto
http://www.illinoisattorneygeneral.gov/pressroom/2010_02/20100217b.html
If you lost money due to unauthorized charges, file a complaint with the Illinois Attorney General, but still make sure you dispute any charges through your bank immediately, since if the company turns out to be insolvent, bank disputes within 60 days may still push the loss back on this company's payment processor and retrieve your money.