UKH

I've just learnt a valuable (metaphorically and literally!) lesson, to pay a bit more attention to your credit card bill/bank statement. Like, I imagine, many others now, I haven't had a paper credit card bill or bank statement in years. I do often flick down on my phone through last months spending on my credit card, mainly to tut and sigh over how much it cost to fill the car up 'these days' or how much Aldi shopping my family seems to eat. But early this evening I noticed a 15 quid charge which I couldn't think what it was for. I googled the company name and came up the company that is in the title. It seems I signed up for it back in the early autumn while buying bike tires from an online shop, Probikekit, who were otherwise fine and had good prices on what I needed.

There was some option during the sales process to claim cashback on a future purchases from the shop. I was aware that seemed to be managed by a third-party company, but I read it through and it seemed like one of those "nothing to lose" things so ticked some boxes etc. and later got an email telling me about the cashback I could get at Probikekit if I bought something else. Of course I didn't need to buy anything else immediately and promptly forgot about it.

But it seems that is when I signed up to join Completesavings.co.uk and authorised them to charge £15 a month for membership. Although I fully accept I should pay more attention to my credit card bill like I used to do in my younger, poorer days, I really don't remember seeing anything via Probikekit site/emails about it being a subscription service, If I had I wouldn't have signed up. I'm sure it was there somewhere, otherwise it would be illegal, but they seem to do a great job of not getting people to notice that bit! I called the service number tonight and they promptly cancelled my subscription so I'm only about the cost of another pair of reasonably priced bike tires out of pocket, but Google reveals news articles going back years of people paying the subscription for years before noticing it.

https://www.thisismoney.co.uk/money/news/article-10061167/Shoppers-fury-180...

https://www.which.co.uk/news/2017/10/beware-costly-online-cashback-schemes/

Their Trustpilot page is odd, or at least how it shows when I was there: https://uk.trustpilot.com/review/www.completesavings.co.uk they still have over 50% excellent reviews but when I read through the first pages it was all one star reviews and people yelling "scam!" A lot of people seemed to have had very similar experiences to me and don't really understand how they signed up without realising the monthly fee. A lot of much bigger name businesses than the bike shop I was using, have deals with them - Asda, Argos, thetrainline.com and so on seem to be mentioned often.

I bought my first online purchase in either 1999 or 2000 I believe, and have done lots of online shopping since. I've never really had any problems with cons or disappearing supposed shops and so on, so thought I was reasonably switched on to these things. Nevertheless they got me! So I thought I might share that experience with fellow UKCers and if you ever thought you were signing up to some cashback/discount scheme with a particular online shop, just check it's not managed through completesavings.co.uk I'm sure a few people are perfectly happy with the discounts and cashback you can get through them, but their way of getting customers seems really quite slippery - I can accept I might have been the fool who wasn't careful enough in a certain case, but you read about hundreds or thousands of other people who feel a bit stupid and angry in the same way, well maybe the company is being unethical in its practices.

My partner says I'm wallowing in this, which I'm sure is true, but the economics editor the Independent managed to join completesavings by mistake as well, https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/internet-fraud-trainline-funds-b177631... and as he says, if he got tricked anyone could be - so it make me feel slightly better.

Thanks for heads up. Deceitful fukkers. Monthly fee wasn’t apparent when I signed up via Trainline a couple of weeks ago with a £16 cashback offer. Thought that Trainline would only be involved with a reputable company. Membership now cancelled.

The company behind it has been printing money from these scams for years in the US (and lost lawsuits about previous versions of it), it's the only bit if the company that actually made any money, so they won't stop unless forced to.

They seem to try to avoid connecting themselves (www.cxloyalty.com) to the consumer brand see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Affinion_Group and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Webloyalty 

It might be worth disputing the transactions with the credit card company and seeing if they'll raise a chargeback as you didn't receive any service for the payments (if nothing else it it forces them to defend the charge if they don't want the chargeback to go through)

I found a couple of articles (I think one was in the Guardian) where they had asked Trainline for comment and they said it was clear what people signed up for.

Was your experience somewhat like mine? That you thought it was a deal with the Trainline and not much else and you don't remember seeing anything about the 15 quid monthly charge?

Cheers! Yep - I saw similar advice from the Which? article linked above although I think they said it's easier to do if you have spent/lost over £100 which fortunately I haven't. I will look into it further though! 

Chargeback doesn't care about the amount. Section 75 is the one with the limit. You want a chargeback because they've charged you money for cock all. Chargeback is brilliant. Unless you're clearly having a laugh, what happens is your credit card company will take the money back and then make the merchant beg if they feel hard done by.

The whole consumer credit industry relies on people feeling safe from stuff like this, so a very dim view is taken by all corners when people charge your card for something you didn't explicitly agree to.

And make sure to leave probikekit stinking reviews everywhere you can so maybe they'll think twice about whether the tiny kickback they get makes it with harbouring these shitbags.

https://money.stackexchange.com/questions/98701/how-to-recover-years-of-mon...

No - I understood that it was just a partnership and I was signing up directly with completesavings. I was unsettled about providing my bank details but they needed that to pay the cashback. It wasn’t stated there was a monthly fee. No doubt I clicked on accepting terms and conditions and if I’d scrolled through the T’s abs C’s it would have been buried in there somewhere. 

We were caught out by this lot last year. We don't buy much online but had bought something from Argos and had signed up without realising. They took 9 payments of £15 out before I noticed. So you are not the only one feeling a bit foolish about not checking bank statements enough. It showed up on the statememt as a POS (point of sale) transaction every month which is very sneaky. The bank could only recover that months payment but I complained to the company and they refunded the rest. 

I hate stuff like this. It is a dishonest practice in reality but not illegal. It should be though as their intention is not to offer a genuine service but to play upon the fact that people in general don't realise what they are signing up for, and aren' t checking credit card or bank statements rigorously enough. 

Yes! I feel pretty silly that I somehow didn't notice what it was - like Simon (UKB Shark) said I understood it was a third party I was dealing with not the bike shop, but really understood it was a deal with the bike shop and they were just a company managing it for perhaps smaller companies that were too small to have their own scheme. I guess a bit like getting a Nectar card through Sainsburys or something like that. 

That so many other seemingly sensible people manage to join without realising they've joined is really interesting though - they have clearly perfected a very fine balance between being legal while still tricking people for the want of a better term. Like I say there are huge numbers of people just saying "scam!" about them on Trustpilot - and I guess while legally it isn't, ethically it does feel rather like one!

I genuinely think that their modus operandi is intentionally to make profit from customer confusion, and not from offering a genuine service. 

I'd be pissed off with the bike shop for associated themselves with them. One star reviews all round. 

I also purchased a item from Probikekit last week, (SRAM eagle 12 speed Chain to go on my 11 speed road bike, love it) and got that pop up message about joining Completesavings it was a bit obvious click bait so I didn't click, I found Probikekit price and service great.

Makes me glad I'm a bit OCD with savings, banks, credit cards statements.  Everything in and out is checked against receipts and recorded on my spreadsheets.  Rock and Roll or what?

This is just a bit of a hangover from being in extremely serious debt about 20 years ago and then deciding to take control of everything financial, and monitoring everything I spent down to the penny.  The habit has pretty much stayed with me now so I check my bank and card every morning for anything that looks suspect.

As the Indy article says:

I contacted Trainline to tell them what happened and ask whether they too would sever ties with this company and stop it using their website to pick up new unwitting “members”.  

There are, I was told, no plans to do so. Readers can draw their own conclusions about whether the Trainline is a safe online space.

"Safe online space" or not, IMO TheTrainLine is not what I would call a reputable company either, given that it charges commission on rail tickets that you can easily buy commission-free from any of the TOC web sites.

This Complete Savings scam does sound quite similar to the issues that people were having with unwittingly signing up to Amazon Prime a few years back. I will admit that I did get tricked in to that the first time it was offered to me, but I did receive and take notice of the confirmatory e-mail they sent me, and I cancelled the 'trial' the same day (I did still get the free 30 days of Amazon Prime, and I have deliberately signed up for, and then immediately cancelled, some trial offers since then when there was an immediate benefit in doing so). So I am far from claiming to be perfect in this regard. However, if the annotated screenshots on that Which? article, along with the statements from Complete Savings about follow-up e-mails, are to be believed (perhaps less likely in the latter case, I'll admit, especially without sight of the wording of said e-mails) then they do seem to offer some opportunity for people to change their minds within the trial period.

None of which is intended to defend the way that Complete Savings chooses to operate, but it does seem that a degree of culpability may (depending on the specific circumstances in each case) lie with the consumer.

The lesson, as ever, would seem to be caveat emptor, and: if it looks to good to be true then it probably is.  So *always* check the small print, follow-up e-mails etc, *especially* if you are asked to hand over card details up front (even if you think there's a good reason for them to be needed - again, always check your assumptions).