Saturday 15 December 2012

Point Pay Scam

Sadly, this isn't a story, but true and ongoing. Stay away from this company at all costs.

So the other day I had to write this email:

Refund of Subscription Money

SupportID: #14050
Ticket Type:  Other
User ID: Not-Provided
Ticket Status: Closed
Ticket Raised By: Robert Maher / robmaher42@gmail.com

14 december 2012 at 12:41...
Dear Sirs,

I am writing to complain that you have taken £46 from my bank account for a subscription that I did not ask for. When I spoke to your customer support center I was told that I had paid £1 for a toothbrush, which I have not received, and signed up to a monthly subscription.

I do not remember agreeing to this and as I am currently unemployed £46 is an amount I can ill afford at the moment and would like this money refunded to my account as soon as possible. I would also be grateful if you could would confirm which regulatory body regulates your company's activities, should I need to escalate the matter.

Thank you.

Rob Maher
I received this reply:

14 december 2012 at 16:18...

Hello!

Your membership status is currently: UNSUBSCRIBED (14-12-2012 12:31:55)

The campaign you have used is called get a Braun electric toothbrush for £1. Here you tried PointShop VIP for 14 days for £1

As a welcome bonus you for trying the membership you received 4660 points, which from our webshop could be exchanged into the welcome gift.

As mentioned on the site, is the PointShop VIP membership is a subscription service which is automatically renewed unless you unsubscribed in the meantime.

I have below listed a couple of the most frequently asked questions, which probably would help you to find answers for your questions:

Why has there been made a withdrawal of £45 from my account?
It happened when we renewed your VIP membership. As we have not registred that the membership had been cancelled, our system has automatically withdrawn £45 after the end of the trial period.

I have never accepted that I would get signed up for a membership
That is not correct. It is not possible to make the order, without accepting our terms. We have done as much as we can to make you aware of the fact this is a subscription service:

How do I unsubscribe from my VIP membership?
This can be done from the VIP-member area.

The unsubscription cannot happen by writing, as we cannot guarantee that the unsubscription will happen at the exact moment you want it to be unsubscribed. From the time you write an email with your unsubscription request to the time a PointShop staff member deals with it, there can be a while (up to a couple of days) from this happening. We do not want your membership to be renewed in the meantime, against your will.

Therefore it is only possible to unsubscribe the membership from the VIP area, where the unsubscription is registred automatically and at once. click here to log on to the member area.

I have not received my welcome giftWhen you ordered VIP, 4660 points were deposited into your PointShop account. It is the account transaction that is called "VIP ordering bonus (Braun electric toothbrush)". You can use those points to order your welcome gift from our shop. You can find it by searching in the shop under the name of the product.

It is not me who has ordered
As the order has been paid with credit card, it sounds like in this case, that others have access to your credit card information. If this is the case, we recommend, that you contact your bank and close your card and the amount anulled. At the same time you should cancel your VIP subsctiption, here on the site.

Beside that this information was entered upon sign up:



Where can I see my order confirmation?
When you ordered we send your order confirmation to you. We have saved a copy. This can be seen by clicking here (opens in a new window).

I wish to regret my purchase Since we have delivered a service (a VIP membership) that has been taken into use/activated at once, it is not possible. This is mentioned in the temrs you accepted when you ordered, and in the order confirmation we send you, when the order was completed.
I hope this solved your problem, otherwise you are more than welcome to contact me again.

I have replied:

Dear Pointpay,

thank you for your reply. However, it has failed to answer my questions or resolve my complaint. Having looked at your website I am unclear what service you claimed to have provided to me for this extortionate rate and indeed the FAQs you have included in your reply do nothing more than serve to confirm that your company achieves money through these means on a regular basis and is fully aware of what it is doing.

Now, I am a freelance journalist with 10 years experience in regulatory compliance, a laptop  and an internet connection and not much going on at the moment. I was writing an article about the bank I used to work for, but I guess I could put that on the back burner for a while and focus on your company instead. Oh I know it won't do much good, but as long as the costs to you in administration and negative publicity are greater than £45 that will suit me just fine.

Alternatively you can refund the subscription money, made up to £50 to cover my time and inconvenience and we can all go back to doing something productive with our time. It's up to you, you can remain in the shadows where you apparently prefer to operate or I can summon ever scree of energy I possess to render you luminous for all to see.

Rob Maher

PS: I have posted copies of this correspondence on my blog (http://eponymistuk.blogspot.co.uk/) and will be putting in on Twitter under the hashtag #pointpayscam

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13 comments:

  1. Hi, I have had trouble with this company too only I have not received a confirmation letter, conformation email or any kind of correspondence until they took £45 from my bank. I called their help line (surely a wrong title). They told me they would cancel my 'membership' but the payment they had taken would not be refunded despite the fact that I had not received anything from them not used their web site not bought anything or received any notification of points etc etc.

    I have now reported them for fraud with Barclays bank and the police. The police need to know who has been tricked by these people so that they can take action. Please don't just sit there tell your local police and report these people. lets get them stopped.

    Carl

    ReplyDelete
  2. I agree - it has happened to me. I am totally embarrassed because I did not check my bank account for some time and they continued to take money out of my account even though it was obvious that I was not using their 'system'.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I share your pain, I did not even receive this 'toothbrush' actually I thought it was cancelled because after I entered my bank details, it went onto a page saying confirm it or something but I changed my mind and switched off the weblink. Never thought twice about it since until I looked last night in my online bank account and saw that they have been taking £45 out of my account since 30th April 2012. Saying I was pissed off is an understatement...

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    2. took £45 out of my account for 4 months called barclays and cancelled but they still managed to take £25 this month

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  3. SAME GOES FOR ME CAN WE GET THIS MONEY BACK OR NOT

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  4. Is there anyway we can take legal action against the,. I signed up for nothing to do with their company!!

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  5. Hi all. I've been a bit lax on this one of late, but given the number of people that visit this page, and the number of people who have had similar problems, I'm going to follow up and see if there 's anything I can do to get this company brought to account. Watch this space...

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  6. I've had issues here too! I am a student and it has taken me over my balance so now I am lost as what to do! I need that money for rent and food! Please let me know when you have followed this up!

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  7. This is a fucking bullshit, I wanna smash their fucking heads agaits brick for being such SCUMBAGS

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  8. HI, JUST DISCOVERED BEEN SCAMMED BY THIS LOT AS WEL TO THE TUNE OF £226 HAVE JUST SENT OFF AN E MAIL TO THEIR CUSTOMER SERVICES DEPT, BUT AFTER READING ALL OF YOUR POSTS, I DON'T HOLD OUT MUCH HOPE FOR GETTING MY MONEY BACK. GOING TO PHONE AS WELL TOMORROW, WILL KEEP YOU POSTED

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  9. Hello all. I too have been conned by this 'company'. I presumed after the call to the 'helpline' that I would fill in a form and get a refund. However like all of you I too am being fobbed off with the fact I signed up to their service. I have not received the item I ordered either.
    However as I paid by credit card I am going to find out if they can reclaim the money as this is fraud.
    What are your thoughts?
    Have any of you had a refund at all?
    Regards - Chris

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. took like £150 from my account no refund :(

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  10. Dear all,
    If you use Barclays and had cancelled payments to pointpay then please be advised that the cancellation is only valid for 120 days from the cancellation is made.After that period pointpay can take money from your account (just took £25 from my account).The money taken after that 120 days period will not be refundable by the bank.

    ReplyDelete