Last week I wrote a story about a scam that online business card firm Vistaprint (Vistaprint.co.uk or Vistaprint.com) is running on unsuspecting buyers. What appears to be occuring is that the credit details of some buyers are being handed on to VPrewards, a separate operation run by another business. This business then starts charging the victim £9.95 per month to be a subscriber on VPrewards (a discount club which is not mentioned anywhere on the Vistaprint site). You are only refunded and unsubscribed when you complain direct with VPrewards or Vistaprint. Vistaprint and VPrewards deny there is anything wrong with a system that signs users up to VPrewards against their wishes. In my case it also failed to provide evidence of the point at which sign-up occured.
My own credit card company put me through to VPrewards in seconds - suggesting it is familiar with this problem. But it does raise the question: are credit card firms aware of complaint levels regarding a particular merchant, yet fail to take any action or investigate further? Shouldn't credit card firms be doing more to protect card holders?
Since writing that story I have been contacted by five individuals who have had the same experience, possibly just a tiny sample of the total number of people affected. A number have taken the drastic step of cancelling their credit card - so fearful are they of VPrewards/Vistaprints tactics.
Here is a typical response:
I have just spoken to Barclays about this payment, I ordered some
business cards for my husbands company at the beginning of the year on
my personnal account card, and have now realised that this £9.95 is
coming out of my account. Barclays have cancelled the monthly payment
and are now going ensure that even if they reapply for the payment it
will be refused, thta means for 9 month I have been paying out £9.95,
god what a scam!!!!! Where do I go from here??????????????
I am still investigating this story but VPrewards and Vistaprint refuse to grant an interview to discuss the subject. In the meantime I urge all readers to avoid using Vistaprint until the firm makes it 100 per cent clear that users of their sites will NOT be signed up to VPrewards against their will.
The worst thing about all this is that Vistaprint appears to be able to continue this scam because no national media can be bothered to spend time investigating what is a rather complex story spanning two continents, which will require considerable effort because Vistaprint is unavailable for comment. I personally will alert the Office of Fair Trading but I don't expect it to act until a newspaper highlights the problem. BBC Watchdog has been informed, but it too seems to be ignoring the story.
Here is the story I wrote on December 12th:
VistaPrint scam
VistaPrint, the online business card service, appears to be running a very dubious sideline in automatically subscribing people - against their wishes - to a discount service known as VPrewards.
It would seem that many people, including myself, have unwittingly been enrolled in a discount club called VPrewards and costing £9.95 per month. What appears to be happening is that when you order business cards or the like on Vistaprint.co.uk you are then charged £9.95 in subsequent months for a rewards scheme (discounts with name brands) that they say you opted into. This occurs after your initial order has been paid in full and you only notice it if you look closely at your subsequent credit card bill.
Like many aggreived customers I have absoloutely no recollection of seeing wording or clicking anything that represented an agreement to join the scheme. Like most people I am very vigilant on any e-commerce site I use. So either VistaPrint were very sneaky and got it past my eagle eyes, or they are simply making it up. Whatever the case they can supply no documentation to prove that I requested to be a subscriber.
The firm simply says it has my IP address to prove it: "You filled out an online questionnaire," said Dinah Manner, customer service rep for VPRewards, the UK company which I was redirected to through my credit card company.
The company agreed to unsubscribe me but said it saw no reason to do anything to prevent it happening to others.
Instead VPrewards denies that this is a common complaint and to rub salt into the wound they say that refunds are only granted through the US office, unless you accept a 'cheque in the post', meaning you still have to pay the fee on your credit card.
Intriguingly www.vprewards.co.uk is not an active domain. It is owned by Adaptive Affinity Ltd, the Edgeware-based company calling itself VPRewards. The company communicates via an email address 'membersavings@vpreward.co.uk' but the email contains no company name or contact details. www.vprewards.com (which is active as the VPrewards web site) is owned by Nebraska-based US firm Adaptive Marketing.
But VistaPrint supplies no details about VPrewards on its own site and nothing beyond a home page is given on the VPrewards web site.
Some victims of this only notice the problem after months of being charged. It is made particularly hard to detect as no information relating to it is provided in writing or on the invoice for your original order. One victim writing on the web suggests the only way to clear the matter up for good is to cancel your credit card and sign up for a new one.
VPrewards.co.uk declined to be interviewed to discuss the matter further. I have emailed the Vistaprint PR team who also refuse to talk on the phone but instead have sent my complaint on to a customer service representative who did contact me by phone while i was out.
Meanwhile there are lots of similar complaints on internet forums, so it could be that hundreds if not thousands are affected. If you or anyone you know has been affected please phone the rant line (above) as I am passing this story on to BBC Watchdog and to the nationals.
What is most shocking is that there appear to be hundreds of customers who have experienced this rip-off. If you type in 'vistaprint scam' into Google you can see them for yourself. When I asked the UK operation to comment on this they said they were only aware of many happy customers on the VPRewards scheme.
The other fact about this case is that you are agreeing to buy from VistaPrint yet you end up also subscribing to something called VPrewards run by Adaptive Affinity Ltd., which may or may not be run by Affinity Marketing of Nebraska.
The fact is it takes many hours/days to sort this all out. It would seem totally reasonable to charge VistaPrint for the time out of your working day that is spent putting matters right. Perhaps some kind of class action would be appropriate in that respect. I am so concerned about this matter that I have opened another web site to detail the matter in depth. This story will be updated - more details soon.
Postscript: A number of people have asked for help in dealing with this problem. My advice is as follows:
- Phone your credit card company and complain
- Your credit card company will almost certainly know of the problem and will give your a telephone number in your country to call (in the UK this is the number for VPrewards in north west London)
- Phone the company and tell them to re-imburse you and to cancell you from the programme
- This is where it gets tricky - most of the time this works but in some cases they are a less than helpful
- If this is the case email vistaprint PR in the USA - the email address is on their web site
Other things that it would be useful to do to save others from this problem:
- provide links to this story
- contact BBC Watchdog (from the BBC website) or your local equivalent consumer affairs TV programme
- contact newspapers and magazines
- contact your local fraud office
Seems as though it is still going on as I have just had two lots of £9.95 (one from VPrewards and one from Club prem) taken from my credit card. HSBC immediately credited the amounts back and I have cancelled my card. If all the banks know about this, why can no one do anything about it? Like most other people, I do not recall signing up to anything, but of course once you have paid for the postage with a card, they have your details. Maybe that old saying "there's no such thing as a free lunch" is worth remembering. Obviously Vista have to cover their printing costs somehow!
Posted by: Alan | October 11, 2008 at 05:31 PM
It seems that it is still happening. I have only recently discovered for the past 3 months that I have been debited firt time by highstreetmax.com for £29.90, then the second and third time by streetmax.com for £14.95
I have NOT signed up for any of those companies, nor did I give consent to debit my account! Trying to rattle my brain as to how they could have gotten my account.
Needless to say, I have called up my bank and reported it to them, and they are re-issuing me another card.
I can't believe that this post was made 2 years ago, and they are still at it!
I have never heard of vistaprint or the companies I mentioned above. The only places I ever shop online are asos.com or amazon.co.uk
And when I do shop on those sites, I do not see anything to do with signing up for rewards or business cards??? How in the world did they manage to get a debit????
Posted by: Britannia | October 15, 2008 at 08:59 PM
i have been had too> Taking £11.95 per month.
Not happy.
Posted by: john dineen | December 14, 2008 at 08:01 PM
Thanks all for your posts, the same has been happening to me £9.90 for the last 4/5 months and i have never bought anything from Vistaprint before. Comes up as shopperdiscounts.com on my statement. I am so furious that regulatory bodies have not yet acted on this as from spending 2 seconds on the internet I came to this page and it is obvious they have got so many people.
particularily as I am a student I cannot afford this and more importantly it is theft! i will be following your advice for actions to take so thank you all. I just hope watchdog capture this issue. Please Watchdog!!!!
Posted by: Maya Dunford | January 25, 2009 at 12:16 AM
I have a large blog post with details of all the scamming sites they run:
http://www.hubbers.com/index.php/i-got-scammed-by-vistaprint-and-adaptive-marketing-and-adaptive-affinity-ltd-and-amazon/
Posted by: Hubbers | April 09, 2009 at 01:56 PM
I CAN'T BELIEVE IT the scam tracing back 4 years ago are still going on. I have just found out I was charged £11.95 by VPRewards.com since October 2008.
I too have report the case to BBC Watchdog and Office of Fair Trading. For those who are affected by this scam, please notify Watchdog and Office of Fair Trading. They need to know how extensive this scam is. A search of "VP Rewards" at Google 4 out of the top 10 are about the scam. Even the auto-suggest search has "vp rewards scam" at the top when you search "VP Rewards".
I am frustrated that nothing has been done.
VPRewards.com is related to VistaPrint.com which, I believe, indirectly related to Amazon.co.uk, as I knew about VistaPrint from the brochure in Amazon.co.uk deliveries, and, suspiciously, there are never any marketing materials from other companies.
If you call Office of Fair Trading, you may mentioned that your case is similar to my report. My case number with OFT is LR499699. They need to have a statistics on the amount of scam there are out there.
It is impossible to speak to a person now at VP Rewards phone number, they are all automated. I found out VP Rewards is a trading name of Adaptive Affinity Ltd. at Cavendish House, 369 Burnt Oak Broadway, Edgware, Middlesex HA8 5AW.
I have written to them by recorded mail as advised by OFT and I will update you here when I hear from them.
Joe.
Posted by: Joe Lee | April 22, 2009 at 09:59 PM
I have recently realised I have been charged £11.95 a month for vprewards and don't know how the got my current card details as it was a year after my order that they started taking money from my account. Not good with computers I cannot find an email address for them.
Posted by: Ann Danalar | May 01, 2009 at 09:05 AM
I'm gutted. We've been scammed for about £500. How come this is still going on? It's never at regular times so my missus thought the entry on the statements was me getting fuel at a garage. Twice the debit card has expired and they've stopped taking for about three months each time only to start again (I presume they've taken their time to guess the new expiry!!!!).
How can Watchdog not have covered this scam? NO respect for that programme any more. This company are so blatant and have been doing it for so long, with so many people reporting the scam to Watchdog. Seriously unimpresssed :(
Gutted :(
Posted by: Tony | May 13, 2009 at 05:43 PM
yes i have been had also.
but i spotted it after 1 month aqnd got a number from my cc company in a few min rang the call center and got the payment back.
beware shame thou i liked using vista print up to this point.
Posted by: p aul | October 04, 2009 at 07:03 PM
I too am a victim I thought the amount going out of my account was connected to my magazine subscription.USUALLY WITH MY REGULAR SUBSCRIPTIONS Iget notification of annual renewal this is when i became aware. I purchased business cards twice but am unaware of signing up to anything else. I have contacted my bank who are awaiting on me to furnish them with more information. the amount taken monthly was 9.95 it is now 11.95. When I telephoned them on 0845 026 1100. they asked for my telephone number when i arranged the business and the card number I used at the time.Ithen got an automated reply saying they did not recognise the details.Iwas then told to try to contact them via email I dont know how long this has gone on for but should have picked it up and been more scrutinised the details more closely. i note from others that this was happening in 2006 it is now 2009 3 years has anything changed and why not anyone else been caught out .what can we do. I have done the obvious things with my bank .Please let as many people as possible know of this scam
Posted by: kathy | November 10, 2009 at 05:56 PM
i know that i DID not tick any box, i have been paying this for 2years, something needs to be done, please let me know if u get ur money back.xxx
Posted by: kelly | January 26, 2010 at 09:58 PM
I have also had the same problem, however I was one of the lucky ones and I contacted my solicitor and they got me a full refund from my credit card company. Dont bother with vista, go claim from your credit card company if you paid by credit card you are covered by section 75 of the Consumer Credit Act. If you need help mail back with your details and I will forward you details of my solicitor, who didnt even charge me!!
Posted by: Steve | March 16, 2010 at 09:15 PM
Thankyou so much for this link, I was recommended Vista Print by a T-shirt printing company, fortunately due to the above, I've been saved from yet another Scam.
Posted by: Sian | April 12, 2010 at 02:19 PM
I have just been scammed by lastminute.com and highstreetmax.com
I used lastminute.com to buy theater tickets in April, at the end of April I noticed a recurring visa transaction for £14.95 debited from my account. I called the number on my statement and it's just an automated service, no one answers. I do not know any account details because I never received any, so I cannot cancel the service via email or on the phone. I spoke to my bank Nationwide about it and they say they cannot help. The only way to stop it is to close my bank account.
Posted by: Shadow-dat | May 19, 2010 at 06:40 PM
does this scam apply to customers using paypal?
Posted by: andrew aitchison | September 19, 2010 at 01:55 AM
if ye are looking for buissness cards etc new company just launched TWEAK.COM
Posted by: PADRAIG LUCID | March 22, 2011 at 03:10 PM
I would like to know how these thieving
B.....ds get away with these obnoxious scams,Surely its on a par with being mugged in the street.get em all in prison.
Posted by: terence john banks | April 16, 2011 at 12:57 PM
Don't know what is wrong what is rite but i know that every one has there own point of view and same goes to this one
Posted by: 2012 Moncler Gilet | November 17, 2011 at 09:55 AM
This scam is still going on, although I think the OFT instructed Adaptive Affinity (the company that owns VP Rewards and other 'reward' companies who do the same thing) to change their processes in the way they acquire customers in 2009. I found out they had taken over £400 out of my account over the course of 3 years. Upon requesting either a) explicit proof that I signed up to their service OR b) a full refund if the proof was not available, they wrote back to me and offered a partial refund and no proof. This is their way of shutting people up, so they can continue to rip people off and take their money because most people won't take the matter further once they have got some money back. They made almost £200 out of me, and I can imagine there are hundreds of thousands of people they have done the same thing to. I am very annoyed and have made it my priority to post details of this scam on as many consumer websites as possible. After going to the consumer advice line and eventually being put in touch with Trading standards, they say there is a loop hole and what they are doing is not illegal. They also said that a judge would probably not be on my side because I should have realised the money was being taken from my account sooner. Humph...
Posted by: Annoyed | December 17, 2011 at 01:40 PM