Caveat Emptor: An Internet Consumer Learns the Hard Way

I am a student. And like milions of other students I traveled home this past Christmas season to celebrate the holidays with friends and family. So in early December I took a few moments during my reading week to purchase my ticket from my internet company of choice, Orbitz. As usual, their service was extraordinary, and despite a weather delay I arrived in Chicago and enjoyed my break.

*END SCENE*

Flash forward to earlier this week: I am frantically crunching numbers to make sure that I have not overdrawn my checking account, because like so many other graduate students, I was still waiting for my living stipend for the spring semester. That is when I found it, a ten dollar debit by "WLI*RESERVATIONREWARDS 8007327031" a company name that I had never heard of. So I decided to call the number to find out what was going on and was told that I had subscribed to their rewards service which I still do not really understand. When I told the customer service representative that I had signed on accidentally and wanted to unsubscribe she intitially tried to convince me that I should retain their services, but quickly acquiesced and even agreed to refund the ten bucks (which was huge in my impecunious state).

When I asked how I could have been signed up she curtly responded that their company works with many internet vendors.

Since I am not a big internet shopper I soon remembered clicking on what was camouflaged as a ten dollar rebate on the Orbitz site. If I remember correctly, the offer even matched the Orbitz template and to the average consumer would have looked like gift from that company.

So I discovered my mistake, but quickly wondered about the integrity of this company, and whether or not others have been tricked as well. A quick Google search led me to a couple of articles discussing a law suit against the company, which is CT based Webloyalty.com Inc. I was also able to find the complaint which alleges, among other things, that the "coupon click fraud scheme" is invasive (because they take your credit card information from the retailer that you are actually buying something from) and unfair. It also claims that 99% of the calls to the company are complaints like mine.

A copy of the complaint can be found here: http://adam.rosi-kessel.org/weblog/pdf/webloyalty_complaint.pdf

It is also easy to find lots of other blogs covering this same issue, and other people complaining about the mysterious "WLI*RESERVATIONREWARDS 8007327031" charges on their credit or debit cards. This has been going on for a while, but since I failed to hear about it until I found the charges on my statement I am joining the chorus.

I urge everyone reading this to check out their next credit card/debit statement and look for the "WLI*RESERVATIONREWARDS 8007327031" charge for around ten dollars. The company seems to charge small amounts ranging from seven to nine dollars, which are easy to miss--some accounts described people being charged for months before they realized that something was suspicious.

So be careful next time you order something online, and if anyone has heard anything else about this I would love to hear about it.