The following has been sent to ABC News, Times Dispatch, Washington Post and various consumer advocate websites.
I am trying to alert the general public about what I believe is an Internet scam by a company that owns what most consumers believe to be reputable companies. I think they are getting away with this because it is such a low dollar amount that it is not being addressed by the authorities. Below is a letter that I have sent to Attorneys General of various states, local consumer reporters and other media to try to get them to investigate whether these practices are fraudulent or not. At this point I have no response yet from the company, except that they are looking into it. Since then I have found that the Better Business Bureau has given them an unsatisfactory rating due to complaint resolutions, and that they also own the USA Network and the Sci-Fi channel, among other ventures.
I have been alarmed by a situation with what I believe is Internet fraud/scamming from a large company.
My situation started when I ordered tickets from a company called Ticketmaster. I have heard of Ticketmaster for years and had complete faith in the company when ordering tickets for an out-of-town sporting event over the Memorial Day weekend. I ordered the tickets and everything went smoothly. The next month a charge showed up for $9.99 on my bank/debit card statement that I couldn't identify. It was listed as TLG*GreatFn17951. I thought it was for incidental items purchased on my trip. It showed up again in June. I contacted my bank, and they gave me the name of the merchant, and I contacted them.
They said I had signed up for a free trial to Entertainment.com, a coupon saver service (http://www.entertainment.com/). I told them I didn't remember that and wanted to cancel. I figured I was out $19.98, but I could live with that. The charge showed up again for July. I called again. They said they had no record of me. I told them I wanted cancellation immediately. They tried to cajole me into accepting another free offer. I declined. The charges appeared in August. This time I cancelled over their Internet site. Then they appeared again in September.
Yesterday, I began checking on them, finally realizing I was being scammed. I went to a website that lists web scam information and found other people listed. I contacted them yesterday. They seem very helpful. The person on the other line told me to fax the statements and she would take care of it. If you check consumer complaints you will know they won't do anything. I then wanted to contact Ticketmaster to inform them of one of their business partners. I found that their parent company is IAC Interactive company. They are also the parent company of Entertainment.com. The woman at IAC told me to send her an e-mail and she would get back to me. I am not expecting a response. I also found out that IAC owns these companies:
Ask Jeeves, Citysearch, Classic Custom Vacations, Entertainment.com, Evite, Expedia, Gifts.com, Hotels.com, Hotwire, HSN, ImprovementCatalog.com, Interval International, LendingTree, liveDaily, Match.com, RealEstate.com, ReserveAmerica, Ticketmaster, TripAdvisor, VacationSpot.com
I thought those were legitimate. They are sites a lot of people use every day.
These people are running a great scam. I wanted to let someone know who had some influence.
This astounded me. This was not a scam from a Nigerian businessman, a low interest mortgage or a request for pharmaceuticals overseas.
0 comments