Let me preface this report to say that I am not easily swindled. On the contrary, I tend towards the overly cautious, which makes this scam all the more irritating to me. I am the mother of 8 children and a small business owner and am very frugal.
The way this scam lends itself legitimacy is by advertising on a popular radio station. It passes itself off as a "National Market Research" promising participants "$2000 in free groceries" in exchange for allowing the marketing firm to track your purchases to forward to the "major grocery chains and food industry" to help them better market their products and services to the public. They claim that their funding to give you these "free groceries" is provided by the food industry as part of their research and development. Never at any time was this represented to me as coupons, a coupon clipping service, or a coupon ordering club. Ever. It was always described as free grocery vouchers that I could use at any grocery stores.
The customer service representative who took my information gave his name and employee ID number. Again these measures help to instill confidence against the possibility that this is in fact a scam. He took my zip code first to see if there were "slots open" in my area. We live in a more rural area, away from the major metro area of Phoenix, AZ. He noted that this was why I was able to "get in" to this very sought after market research opportunity.
He said there was a $19.95 set up fee to get into the survey, but that the company would send a $15 voucher to offset the charge, making the fee just $4.95. The $15 dollar rebate has yet to arrive. The $19.95 dollar charge showed up against my bank account immediately and showed as PRODUCTS FOR LIFE INC 866-508-2316 NV. The representative told me I would get my grocery vouchers within 5 to 10 business days.
The debit occured from my account on 6/16. Today, 7/12 I got the "vouchers" from grocerysavers.com. More than 20 business days after the sign up. The program, not free groceries, but a mail in program where I can request pre-clipped coupons at a percentage of the face value. The front of this brochure also touts that they are BBB members.
A quick search of the BBB website does list the name grocerysavers.com, but they are an unaccredited business. The company "Consumer Spending Survey" is not listed at all.
Also part of the sign up process, the customer service representative leads you to believe, in order to recieve the free grocery vouchers, you must sign up for other monthly charged services such as freeshipping.com, Leisure Plus, and Savings 2 go. After the 3rd additional service, I declined any other offers, and the representative gave me 800 numbers for each of these ancillary services telling me I could cancel them within the 30 day free trial period and would recieve no charge against my card.
All of the ancillary "memberships" I cancelled today. I explained to their respective representatives that I was sure that their companies were upstanding organizations, but that unfortunately, being associated with such a shameless misrepresenting company had lost them my business forever.
This mistake has cost me $20. If a boatload of other people fell for it too (which I suspect is the case) they made a TON of money by preying on the hopes of families trying to save some money in these tough times. That is reprehensible in my sight. Hopefully, this report prevents someone else from falling for the same scam.
I am also a bit upset at the fact that a respected and very well listened to radio station would air the ad. I understand that cash is king and advertising dollars is how a radio station opperates, but this scam has put a bad taste in my mouth for the station. I have a call in to their sales manager, and am awaiting a call back.
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