Credit Card Companies Eyed in Scams
Once again, the credit card companies are on the Congressional radar. This time for their role in web scams against consumers.
CNET News ran an article last month that caught my eye. It seems that the “big three,” Visa, Mastercard and American Express are under investigation for allowing shady monthly charges on consumer credit cards.
Specifically, the US Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation wants to know why as many as 30 million people have been scammed by Webloyalty, Vertrue, and Affinion. Those three companies are the not-so-good ‘post-transaction marketing companies’ that cause recurring monthly charges to appear on consumer credit card accounts. The committee concluded that deceptive practices were used to fool consumers into signing up for loyalty programs. Now the commerce committee wants to know why the big three credit card companies were, at best, complacent about stopping these practices that appear to be against the card companies’ own rules.
Typical government to need to ask the credit card companies. The answer is rather obvious. Money. Lots of money. According to the report, Webloyalty, Vertrue, and Affinion sucked up about $1.4 billion in revenue from the practice, but only after paying $800 million to some of the biggest on-line retailers. Needless to say, the credit card companies saw a significant revenue stream from all that too.
I started out as a merchant advocate but I can’t find any redeeming value in any merchant that would sell credit card information to another company by trickery or otherwise. None.
The article linked above tells you how they do it. I urge you to read it and learn how. Avoid being a victim of this blatant legal scam.
