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 As we have not registred that the membership had been cancelled, our system has automatically withdrawn £45 after the end of the trial period.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:

• It is mentioned on the campaignsite (click here to see)
• It is mentioned in the terms (click here to see)
• It is mentioned in the order confirmation (click here to see)
• It was written in the welcome e-mail (click here to see)

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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