We were looking for a way to raise money for our children's ministry. We stumbled upon 'Samaritan Fundraising', which should be renamed 'Devil's Ripoff'. Little did we know the heartache that we were about to endure.
My wife contacted Samaritan Fundraising on behalf of our church and was excited to get the program. The sales person on the other end of the phone made the program sound very legitimate and worthwhile. To entice my wife even more, the salesperson said they were having a better sale on the larger amounts of cards.
So my wife ordered 1000 cards from the company, and they took the church's card in payment. We were to receive the cards and then the church's card would be billed in 30 days, giving us time to sell the cards. Boy were we in for a shock!
The cards arrived and simply had a web address on them. We went to the web address and tried looking up the discounts. NONE AVAILABLE! We thought there must be some mistake, so we looked at 'Big Box' retailers. Sure enough, there were discounts available... THE SAME ONES AVAILABLE TO EVERY TOM, DICK AND HARRY!
The cards were obviously a stupid trick where the company reroutes the user to EXISTING discounts. Samaritan Fundraising doesn't negotiate anything with merchants. DO NOT buy or use this card! It is a sham! You can go to any major retailer's website and get the same discounts. DO NOT BE A FOOL.
This sadly, isn't even the worst part. When the company was confronted with the fact that the cards were NOT helpful and we couldn't in good conscience sell them as a benefit for a CHURCH, the company said 'Oh well'. Then they explained that they would only credit 25% of the card's cost - which is not explained ANYWHERE on their website or during the sales process. They wanted to charge the church $750.00 for NOTHING.
The church ended up having to cancel the credit card so that the idiots running Samaritan Fundraiser wouldn't charge it. Then the company turned the account over to an attorney (Szabo Associates Inc. - John M. Shearer) from Atlanta, GA to attempt and collect the $750.00 from my wife. My wife doesn't even work for the church!
I will be contacting everyone I can and reposting this warning to as many websites as possible in the hopes that NO ONE ever falls victim to the Samaritan Fundraising SCAM again. I hope that the Attorney General shuts them down and puts the owners in jail. No one should have to suffer through a scam like this when they are trying to help children.
DO NOT buy the Samaritan Fundraising Cards or do business with them - as far as we can tell, this company isn't the good samaritan, it's the highway bandit.
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