Fraud? No problem, it's our way of doing business...
My wife orders absolutely everything online at Christmas, and so there's a raft of charges on the credit card. Fortunately I'm so anal retentive that I check what each and every one is. Here is what happens when you catch Shopping Essentials on the FIRST day you possibly could.
Looking over the Mastercard statement I got today, I saw "SHOPPINGESSEN#800-316-8821CT" (I'm omitting the numbers) charging me $9.95 on 20 December, in the middle of the holiday buying rush. Hmm. My wife couldn't remember it, but I chalked it up to Christmas expenses.
Again fortunately, I was just curious enough to go back to it, and plug the phone number into Google. Lo and behold, the results start off with a bunch of consumer fraud sites, complaint at the top. Also telling, this company has many many names at the same phone number. Kind of like how a criminal has aliases. Why so similar?
After perusing just a few of these reports, what was going on became clear. We probably clicked the wrong place online one time, and the ripoff began.
An immediate call to Shopping Essentials' 800 number resulted in a completely voicemail-automated "cancel service" request. It's just not worth it for them to hash it out on the phone with you anymore. Sure, we're a fraud. Caught us? Okay, forget about it, we'll let you cancel. We know you'll win eventually anyway. But if you didn't catch us... Thanks for the money!
It is worth mentioning a note of apprehension here: To cancel, one must enter the credit card number to which the billing is taking place. I didn't feel too secure about this, but logically they already have the number, or this wouldn't be taking place.
I then called my credit card issuer to refuse the existing charge, because I was sure S.E. Was hoping the "easy-cancel" system would lull consumers off recovering their initial cash grab. I was informed a SECOND charge had already made it onto my account, for the next billing cycle. Grab as much money as you can before you get caught, I guess.
The credit card company went ahead and turned back both charges as fraud, but warned me that S.E. Could dispute that and still come back after "their" money. I doubt they'll go to the trouble, it doesn't fit my perception of their business model. But I'll be watching.
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