Yes they did the same to me and Bank of america is telling me i have to wait for Zeal to take my money before they will file a complaint i feel that that is unfair and according to website ZEAL is partners with Chase and US bank and walmart..
Not likely they aer "partners" to either Chase, US Bank, or Walmart, but it is common for scams to use references to well known companies to fabricate the appearance that they are "legitimate".
Maybe I'm a "partner" with US Bank if my wife has a Chase credit card. Maybe I'm a "partner" with Walmart if I bought some pants there last week.
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Nikki
| 1 reply
I suggest we all file our comlainted with BBB and our AGO. We had applied for a loan...nothing to do with this Zeal Money. Same amount of 29.95 was taken out of our account too. To add we are being harressed with many phone calls from different reps (that are RUDE, RELENTLESS, and ARGUMENATIVE). I believe they are all connected.... Zeal Money scammers and the other "loan" frauds that have been calling my house all day for the last 2 weeks when we first researched loans. Anyone else getting the phone call too?
I took am getting phone calls but no one ever says anything. The number is either blocked or a number that isn't even long enough to be called a phone number. I have call my cell company to attempt to stop these calls but unfortunately they can not be stopped. I am also starting to receive text messages that are not English they are pictures of stars and other weird symbols. i really hate this whole thing!!
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Trece
This happened to me as well today and glad i have acct. notifications set on my phone. Taking care of this issue right away!
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tj
| 3 replies
With this type of scam, they typically bury the "authorization" for the charges as obscurely as they can get away with while still maintaining they "disclosed" it, with the main landing page typically including no mention so people don't even have a clue to look, and often touting "free" as loudly as possible.
Their own website is a good example.
You first have to follow the link to terms, where you find a long legalese document with paragraph after paragraph of boilerplate in light grey on white small print, almost all of which deals with "terms" entirely unrelated to any disclosure of a charge. The charge is only disclosed about 4 paragraphs down, in the middle of the paragraph, in undistinguished print, with the acronym "ACH" spelled as lower case "ach" to blend into the paragraph.
You can count 6 deliberate webpage design choices, each separately made to obscure the disclosure, with each of them "plausibly deniable" and "excusable", yet they ALL act together to reduce the likelihood that consumers would be aware that they were about to be charged: 1) hidden behind a link, when you may not even be expecting any charge at all due to the blazing "free to start" landing page. 2) The print is chosen to be harder than normal to read, light grey on white. 3) The whole terms page runs on and on, off the screen. 4) That there is any charge at all is buried several paragraphs down. 5) It's buried in the middle of that paragraph. 6) The acronym that might quickly alert you to a charge, "ACH", which refers to the Automated Clearing House, is spelled in lower case, different from normal practice, but perfect for blending into other lower case text in the paragraph.
It's just about pushing the odds in your favor, every way you can think of.
So what do the corresponding "terms and conditions" disclosures look like from the "affiliated" lender sites?
Do they use the same design tactics? How closely do they match in style?
Thank you for that very helpful and informative article/fedback, tj. I learned a lot from your feedback and maybe that will prevent me from makingthe same error in the future. This said feedback of yours was so detailed and articulately stated witha few words that I had never seen before (lol) that I thughtthat you might be a layer. Rod
oops I forgot to do my usual "proofread" Thank you for that very helpful and informative article/fedback, tj. I learned a lot from your feedback and maybe that will prevent me from making the same error in the future. This said feedback of yours was so detailed and articulately stated with a few words that I had never seen before (lol) that I thought that you might be a lawyer. I thought a boilerplate was furnace related. haha It is, but now you have increased my working vocabulary. Rod (again)
I'm a "quant" with an interest in game theory, scientific method, intelligence analysis including anaylsis of competing hypotheses (called ACH, but not the payment system), etc.
Many disciplines have evolved their methods for analyzing evidence, including the legal reasoning and rules of evidence used in law. "Profiling" from Google searching provides a good start when determining the scope and tactics used in a consumer fraud, but I'm interested in not only what can be found, but in how we draw conclusions and why we believe what we believe, i.e. what makes particular evidence the "pivot point" for any shift in conclusions. In ACH terms, this is called the "diagnosticity" of evidence.
The same aspects of web design have shown up in similar "payday loan application" sites, including a cluster based in Scottsdale, and another one based in Las Vegas. It is an open question whether this one has any connection to those other two, but geography alone suggests the possibility should be considered.
Similar design practices were alluded to in a lawsuit involving "teeth whitening" products several years ago, against a large fraudulent charge cramming scam run from Canada that was later sued by FTC and shut down. According to plaintiffs in the earlier lawsuit, defendents claimed their web design firm knew how to design "landing pages" to maximize revenue for the product, but the result was a deluge of customer service complaints alleging unauthorized charges.
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JenniLynn
Well here's another victim!!! Have to wait until Monday to go to the bank! :(
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Latoya
I'm not sure who this is but they just took 29.95 out of my checking account..fraud...disputing with the bank
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tay
Just happen to check my account today and zeal money solutions charged me 29.95 and I don't know who that is and didn't authorize that. I filed a dispute .. its crazy how something like this could happen. ..
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nicole
just happened to me as well. unbelievable.
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Irritated Victim
Can't believe i've been scammed :-(
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caiti
i filled a complaint with the fbi. they are scammers and will get caught no ones gonna steal money from me.
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Rod
| 2 replies
I also got a $29.95 charge from ZEAL MONEY SOLUTIONS and had NO CLUE why. I immediately called my bank and got their phone #, called ZEAL, and was told by the [***] that I spoke to that the money would be credited back to my account in 4-5 business days, This person with whom I spoke was rude, disrespectful, and would not answer any question I asked such as "How did you get me debit card #, what type of business are you, etc. He only kept responding, "are there any other questions, sir". In frustration before I hung up the phone after being assured the money would be refunded, I insulted his obvious sexual orientation, as he flounted it in his voice throughout the 5 minute talk. There was NO DOUBT he was gay. I normally never make homophobic slurs, but this MF was so rude, evasive, and obnoxious, that I did so only as a way to hurt his feelings as he did mine. Anyway, 5 business days have passed and the transaction has changed from pending to posted. So this morning I called my bank and they gave me a $29,95 "CREDIT DUE TO ACH/ONLINE DISPUTE ". I still don't know if the money will EVER be credited back to me from ZEAL.
The scheme has been set up to specifically use the ACH payment system, which contains none of the security checks used by the credit and debit card systems, like CCV and expiration date, which provide some barrier to just submitting fraudulent charges into the system. The system is normally used for routine transactions between companies and other businesses or consumers, for repeated payments like utility bills, etc., where the risk of fraud is normally low, primarily to benefit from the extremely low cost of the process. ACH transactions are entirely electronic, based on bank routing and account number, and the account name isn't even checked before the money is transferred. ACH transfers were NOT designed for normal retail or online purchase transactions, and in fact they are prohibited by NACHA rules from being used by outbound (cold calling) telemarketers, just because of the risk of fraud.
In theory, it's supposed to be self-policing, by unauthorized charges being pushed back with a penalty on the merchant. In practice, when used fraudulently, the schemes that do so show up with a variety of counterstrategies designed to block, confuse, refute, and ultimately delay consumers from submitting timiely bank disputes, trying to get past the 60 day dispute period.
Using ACH, they could be running account numbers illegally purchased from some other scam, or maybe just retained from an earlier scam, even random account numbers likely to be live if chosen to be similar to other known active accounts, or they could even just be making "mistakes", mixed in with account numbers obtained from deceptive "loan application" sites as cover ("plausible deniability"), and there is nothing in the ACH system to stop the charges from going through, unless and until the victim catches the error and forces a chargeback.
Comments
Bet those companies don't even know they exist.
Please post the link to the deceptive webpage.
Maybe I'm a "partner" with Walmart if I bought some pants there last week.
Their own website is a good example.
You first have to follow the link to terms, where you find a long legalese document with paragraph after paragraph of boilerplate in light grey on white small print, almost all of which deals with "terms" entirely unrelated to any disclosure of a charge. The charge is only disclosed about 4 paragraphs down, in the middle of the paragraph, in undistinguished print, with the acronym "ACH" spelled as lower case "ach" to blend into the paragraph.
You can count 6 deliberate webpage design choices, each separately made to obscure the disclosure, with each of them "plausibly deniable" and "excusable", yet they ALL act together to reduce the likelihood that consumers would be aware that they were about to be charged:
1) hidden behind a link, when you may not even be expecting any charge at all due to the blazing "free to start" landing page.
2) The print is chosen to be harder than normal to read, light grey on white.
3) The whole terms page runs on and on, off the screen.
4) That there is any charge at all is buried several paragraphs down.
5) It's buried in the middle of that paragraph.
6) The acronym that might quickly alert you to a charge, "ACH", which refers to the Automated Clearing House, is spelled in lower case, different from normal practice, but perfect for blending into other lower case text in the paragraph.
It's just about pushing the odds in your favor, every way you can think of.
So what do the corresponding "terms and conditions" disclosures look like from the "affiliated" lender sites?
Do they use the same design tactics?
How closely do they match in style?
Many disciplines have evolved their methods for analyzing evidence, including the legal reasoning and rules of evidence used in law. "Profiling" from Google searching provides a good start when determining the scope and tactics used in a consumer fraud, but I'm interested in not only what can be found, but in how we draw conclusions and why we believe what we believe, i.e. what makes particular evidence the "pivot point" for any shift in conclusions. In ACH terms, this is called the "diagnosticity" of evidence.
The same aspects of web design have shown up in similar "payday loan application" sites, including a cluster based in Scottsdale, and another one based in Las Vegas. It is an open question whether this one has any connection to those other two, but geography alone suggests the possibility should be considered.
Similar design practices were alluded to in a lawsuit involving "teeth whitening" products several years ago, against a large fraudulent charge cramming scam run from Canada that was later sued by FTC and shut down. According to plaintiffs in the earlier lawsuit, defendents claimed their web design firm knew how to design "landing pages" to maximize revenue for the product, but the result was a deluge of customer service complaints alleging unauthorized charges.
In theory, it's supposed to be self-policing, by unauthorized charges being pushed back with a penalty on the merchant. In practice, when used fraudulently, the schemes that do so show up with a variety of counterstrategies designed to block, confuse, refute, and ultimately delay consumers from submitting timiely bank disputes, trying to get past the 60 day dispute period.
Using ACH, they could be running account numbers illegally purchased from some other scam, or maybe just retained from an earlier scam, even random account numbers likely to be live if chosen to be similar to other known active accounts, or they could even just be making "mistakes", mixed in with account numbers obtained from deceptive "loan application" sites as cover ("plausible deniability"), and there is nothing in the ACH system to stop the charges from going through, unless and until the victim catches the error and forces a chargeback.