Loyalty programs: $ 1.4 billion fraud
The US Senate has begun hearings on the high-profile fraud case on the Internet. The so-called “loyalty programs”, which operate in many American online stores, including such reputable ones as Orbitz, Priceline.com, Buy.com, 1-800 Flowers, Continental Airlines, Fandango and Classmates.com, came under the gun.
The scheme is simple: before buying a store customer, fraudulently forced to subscribe to a certain loyalty program (it was enough to enter your email address, in exchange for this store offered a discount, for example, $ 10), after which monthly $ 9-20 debit from the participation card began in the program (the scheme is described in the Senate report ).
The frauds were dealt with by special marketing firms Affinion, Webloyalty, and Vertrue, who colluded with the largest online stores, which supplied them with payment numbers of their customers.
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The Senate Commission found that the conditions of the loyalty program were deliberately hidden from consumers, and the process of leaving the “club” was the most difficult.
The hearings will last six months. The volume of materials to this business is amazing, because for many years of its existence loyalty programs have covered a huge circle of clients. Almost every American citizen suffered (even umputun's wife “sold her email”, as he told in Podcast No. 191 ).
Affinion, Webloyalty and Vertrue revenues exceeded $ 1.4 billion, and partner online retailers earned $ 792 million from this. Experts are surprised at the large volume of these payments. It turns out loyalty programs were extremely successful. At first glance, the naive method of cheating Americans turned out to be amazingly effective.
Here is a list of partner online stores that have collaborated with the above three companies and earned more than $ 1 million each. There were 88 such sites, and Classmates.com earned the most ($ 70 million).
The scheme is simple: before buying a store customer, fraudulently forced to subscribe to a certain loyalty program (it was enough to enter your email address, in exchange for this store offered a discount, for example, $ 10), after which monthly $ 9-20 debit from the participation card began in the program (the scheme is described in the Senate report ).
The frauds were dealt with by special marketing firms Affinion, Webloyalty, and Vertrue, who colluded with the largest online stores, which supplied them with payment numbers of their customers.
')
The Senate Commission found that the conditions of the loyalty program were deliberately hidden from consumers, and the process of leaving the “club” was the most difficult.
The hearings will last six months. The volume of materials to this business is amazing, because for many years of its existence loyalty programs have covered a huge circle of clients. Almost every American citizen suffered (even umputun's wife “sold her email”, as he told in Podcast No. 191 ).
Affinion, Webloyalty and Vertrue revenues exceeded $ 1.4 billion, and partner online retailers earned $ 792 million from this. Experts are surprised at the large volume of these payments. It turns out loyalty programs were extremely successful. At first glance, the naive method of cheating Americans turned out to be amazingly effective.
Here is a list of partner online stores that have collaborated with the above three companies and earned more than $ 1 million each. There were 88 such sites, and Classmates.com earned the most ($ 70 million).
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/75752/
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