Comments on: How I Accidentally Agreed to Pay $300 a Year to a Company I’d Never Heard of, for a Service I Didn’t Want

By: Gil Morales

Gil Morales — Fri, 07 Jan 2011 04:39:40 +0000

Savings Ace illegally takes your money. They are crooks. They need to be sued and stopped immediately from taking peoples money. They take money from your account and no one seems to be able to stop them. They have been illegally taking money from people for years. They stole over $300 from my account. I had to cancel my credit card to stop them. I am checking my account transactions daily.

By: PJ Garfield

PJ Garfield — Mon, 06 Sep 2010 14:22:49 +0000

Fight these charges. Savings ace does business in Nebraska, flood the Attorney Generals Office w ith complaints. John Bruning, Nebraska Attorney General…2115 State Capitol…Lincoln, NE 65809. Savinsace lists this as their address:

SavingsAceSM
9500 West Dodge Road
Suite 100
Omaha, NE 68114-3331

By: flared0ne

flared0ne — Wed, 09 Dec 2009 19:56:14 +0000

An interesting suggestion?? Someone should generate a list of the domain names associated with Intellius, Adaptive Marketing, SavingsAce, and all the companies mentioned in that CNet article about the Federal probe into this exact same activity — and then make it available as a simple “Add me to your HOSTS file” text file.

Reading that CNET article was almost destructively informative — the list included companies I occasionally deal with and never would have suspected of “buying in” to windfall profits from “sheeple sheering”. And the worst part was finding out that the majority of the companies involved essentially responded “but it’s legal”, and basically indicated they didn’t feel any changes were really necessary. It was almost like hearing “we’re doing you a service if our cheating you serves to ‘inoculate’ you against the REAL evil predators lurking online.”

Unfortunately, simply blocking access to the primary menaces behind the practice just doesn’t have that “satisfying” feel of providing up-front feedback to the “affiliate” companies directly — letting a company know that I’ve put them on “ignore” due to heinous practices should be a part of the bounced “reality check” these companies get back as a result of their loose-moraled interpretation of “THEIR own best interests” when it’s at my expense.

By: Jack Kern

Jack Kern — Thu, 03 Dec 2009 21:27:52 +0000

Caveat emptor be damned in this intentional scenario since it is specifically designed to mislead the consumer.

Recent Facts:

1) Jain, the CEO/Founder of Intellius has a long track record of deceptive practices, look for yourself.
2) Intelius is being sued by a class-action suit in California
3) Intelius is being sued by a class-action suit in its home state of Washington
4) Intelius has been chastised by and is being investigated by the State Attorney General’s Office in Washington.
5) Intelius has been called before a Congressional Committee in Washington DC to explain its deceptive practices.
6) Intelius has made announcements that it is scaling back or ending its relationship with Adaptive Marketing, the company it pushes many of its unaware consumers to.

Believe me, Harry is FAR from alone in his assessment.

By: Nate

Nate — Tue, 01 Dec 2009 22:52:11 +0000

I’m truly disturbed at the number of comments saying something like “you should have read the fine print! Caveat emptor.” Do you really believe that the author of this post deserved what happened to him? What about people for whom English is a second language – do you think the page is laid out in a way to make it easy (or even possible) for them to understand what they’re signing up for? Do you applaud these companies for creating such a “creative” way to snare new customers? I don’t get it…
Oh, and as for the suggestion of a one-time-use credit card – that won’t help you in this situation; SavingsAce would waste no time in unleashing a collections agency on you, and it would end up costing you a lot more, one way or another. One-time-use cards (which I think EVERY credit card ought to offer) are only good for a merchant that you suspect might “lose” or otherwise inappropriately use your CC info.

By: Elgog Partynipple

Elgog Partynipple — Tue, 01 Dec 2009 14:54:14 +0000

You might want to look at this aritcle from PRWEB.COM. Apparently SavingsAce is a leader in this type of marketing and is a hero in the Adaptive Marketing community. So there is an entire industry group out there applauding these deceptive marketing practices. It makes me sick. Apparently the Innovative marekting practices of SavingsAce (read that as amount of money ripped off consumers) surpass others in the industry.

http://www.prweb.com/releases/savingsace/webawards/prweb3168224.htm

By: Markus

Markus — Mon, 30 Nov 2009 14:53:55 +0000

MovieTickets.com did the same thing to me. Once I saw how it worked, it was easy enough to decline but it uses the same technique. If we tech wonks can get snookered, I can’t imagine how many normal folks get nailed.

By: Craig

Craig — Mon, 30 Nov 2009 04:40:04 +0000

This is a problem that’s getting alot of attention lately.

There’s an article about it at CNET here:
http://news.cnet.com/8301-1023_3-10399880-93.html?tag=nl.e404

I renewed my membership at Classmates.com today knowing I’d get directed to this page, so I knew what to expect.

Still, it’s incredibly unethical and hopefully soon it’ll be illegal.

By: Mark

Mark — Sun, 29 Nov 2009 20:47:40 +0000

That’s a 21st century hazzard. I think we’ve all been taken some time or other. We need a 30 day change your mind law for on-line sales and some kind mandatory “you’ve just opted to pay 24.95 a month fr this wonderfully wothless service pleas click to confirm” Write your congressman today!!!

By: Jo Mahma

Jo Mahma — Sun, 29 Nov 2009 19:26:08 +0000

One solution to this might be to use a credit card that provides “Virtual Account Number” services. Two banks that I believe provide this service are Citibank and Bank Of America – not sure who else. My experience with CitiVAN (Citibanks Virtual Account Number service) is as follows: You create a separate cc # for each transaction. You can provide a credit limit for just over the amount you are spending as well as set an expiration date for 1-12 months (1 month is default.) After the card has been used by a given merchant (Amazon, Apple, eBay, etc) the account CANNOT be used by any other merchant. (Attempts to utilize the card at another merchant are denied.) Worth a shot anyway. Screw those “companion marketing” schemers – limit your transactions! What burns me is that not ALL of my bank card merchants offer VAN services. (Grr.)