Webloyalty, Vertrue, and Affinion are companies that charge your credit card tiny amounts. Usually when they show up on your card you’ll see the words “rewards” or “club.” Most people don’t recall paying for a service or signing up for one and now the Senate has finally decided to do something about these companies.
So, when exactly do you sign up for things like WebLoyalty? Have you ever purchased something online then found yourself barraged by popups for $10 off or some kind of rebate? That’s where they get you.
Webloyalty has been known to act like a company that had something to hide. It has grown to be a company that hides information from the public and buries negative stores to try to make sure people don’t see them.
Now, however, there is one person out there trying to get the company to talk about their shady business practices:
However, Webloyalty may have learned from past mistakes. Webloyalty’s corporate PR office e-mailed me after I Twittered that I was looking for former employees of these three companies — no luck, I probably would have done better hitting some of the bars in downtown Stamford — to ask if I needed anything.
I wanted to know: How is the company considering changing its practices in light of the congressional investigation? “Although the incidence of individuals who appear to have clicked through our process without reading what they were doing is quite small as compared to all of our members, even a few is too many,” Beth Kitchener, Webloyalty’s vice president of corporate communications, said in an e-mail exchange. “The class action lawsuit settlement as well as the issues raised by the Senate Commerce Committee put an exclamation point on the need to get this number as low as possible.”