A few weeks ago I wrote about my own frustrating experience with a Web loyalty program called Easy Saver that I hadn’t signed up for and hadn’t given my credit card info to, but that I had somehow become a dues-paying "member" of simply by clicking the wrong box at the end of a purchase at Proflowers.com.
As it turns out, some of you wrote in to tell us you had similar experiences. A recent Haggler column ("Watch where you click and have a great day") in the New York Times also warned readers about this tricky practice. Apparently, it's common and can easily befall any e-shopper.
I have since discovered that there are a bunch of well-regarded companies, including Priceline.com, AllPosters.com, BlueMountain.com, and even Classmates.com that allow other Web sites to step in on the completion of a sale to offer discount coupons, rebates, and other deals. Click on these "deals" and you could find yourself signed up in a Web loyalty program with monthly fees of $8 or $9 charged to your credit card.This isn’t illegal, but when I checked the Better Business Bureau's site, I also found out that one of these program providers, Webloyalty.com, has 30 serious complaints against it.
According to our own Web safety experts, there are a few precautions you can take to keep such surprise charges off your bill.
Scrutinize your statement every month. It's a no-brainer, but accounting for every charge listed can help you spot trouble and do something about it immediately.
Check your e-mails—and your spam. Web loyalty programs often send notification e-mails before its charges take effect—and there's still time to cancel. But they could end up in your spam folder instead.
Read the fine print. Reading an e-tailer's privacy policy from top to bottom will let you know if they share information (your e-mail and shipping or billing info, for instance) and about their partnerships with other companies. When we checked Allposters.com's privacy a section about their relationship with Webloyalty.com was near the bottom.
Think before you click. If you see information like this, think twice about clicking on seemingly free online offers or about using online retailers who support them.
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