FTD.com on the Today Show

[Mac]

Anybody else catch that scathing segment on the Today Show related to the credit card scams associated with WebLoyalty.com as FTD's Mercury Man logo passed by on the screen?

 

[Bigted]

Didn't catch it but that's a shame. It hurts all of us when these scams come to light.

 

[Mac]

Yes BigTed. Especially when by default ALL FTD FOL websites (I repeat: ALL) are associated webloyalty.com as every credit card is passed to this scam company.

It's not just FTD.com involved, it is also many FOL FTD florists Mom and Pop stores. The problem is, most Mom and Pop stores don't know they are passing the credit card information.

 

[CHR]

And flowers seem to be among the scammiest. FTD, 1-800, PF plus Blooms Today's "50% off" claims.

Didn't see the segment, either. Hope it will appear online.

 

[CHR]

Here ya go: http://today.msnbc.msn.com/id/26184891/vp/33987109#33987109

 

[mikec]

I saw it this morning. I'm surprised and dissapointed that they didn't mention Pro Flowers. I've listened to a couple of different NPR(National Public Radio) segments in which they interviewed people that were taken in by this "save $10" when ordering from the PF site and what a difficult time they had in getting refunds and getting the automatic debits to stop.

The mention and display of the FTD logo this morning was a surprise.

 

[CHR]

OMG Classmates.com (owned by FTD.com parent company) NETTED $70 million from these scams. :faint:

Pathetic.

 

[Mac]

Yep. I thought for sure Proflowers would get a mention. 99% percent of the complaints posted on http://www.flowercomplaint.com/proflowers_complaints.html are related to extra credit card charges.

 

[CHR]

PF's EZSaver was not under investigation by the senate since it appears to be a newer company. The Rockefeller committee was just looking into the practices of the three mentioned in the Today Show piece.

 

[TOTO]

All the more reason to divest......................

Shops with a WS website need to divest themselves from this problem and get themselves a WS FREE website where they are in total control.

A good choice for an INDEPENDENT WS FREE website is right here.

http://www.demoflowershop.com/

No point in being an accessory to the crime before, during, or after the facts.

As to Jay Rockefeller and his committee? He might want to take a look at some of our stimulous money which went to NON-EXISTENT Congressional districts touted to create all those NON-EXISTENT new jobs.

What makes me think that, this will never happen?

 

[BloomingFlorida]

Might be justification for using a Visa gift card when making online purchases....

 

[paulieflowers]

I never really questioned what the web loyalty $ was from & assumed it was something extra for having a FOL site. Then a customer called to let me know he was a victim. I called FTD rep & was told it was some sort of added value program for our customer. I opted out once I found out about it. My fault for not investigating earlier.

Way fewer headaches & money out the window having a WS-free site now.

 

[CHR]

Paulieflowers -

I had forgotten that FOL hosted florist sites got caught up in the WebLoyalty scam, too.

Real local florists got their good names damaged by the program - but of course, FTD was making $ off those click throughs and that was their primary concern.

 

[David]

When I had an FOl web site. I opted out from day one. I think the commission was $1.00 per on line order placed. But may be less now.

 

[David]

Ben Endelman from Harvard was part of the interview.

Cathy had posted about him before. I copied his email newsletter here.

 

[CHR]

A few highlights from the Senate Report (PDF)

Escalated Customer Contacts with Affinion’s “Support Desk” Regarding Its “Great Fun” Discount Club: January – April 2009
Affinion Partner
Escalated “Customer Contacts” Regarding “Billing” and “Cancellations and Suppression Requests”

1-800-Flowers.com

618

A. “Customer Noise”
When e-commerce partners enter into financial partnerships with Affinion, Vertrue, and Webloyalty, the three companies promise to handle cancellations, complaints, and other ―customer service‖ issues. As a result of this arrangement, when consumers see a membership club charge on their credit card or bank statements, they are provided only a club name and a toll free number operated by Affinion, Vertrue, and Webloyalty.

The purpose of routing customer service issues through the three Connecticut companies is to prevent what Webloyalty promotional materials call ―negative impact on partner brands.

Affinion, Webloyalty, and Vertrue handle dissatisfied customers in order to insulate the partners from their own customers‘ criticism, which is commonly described as ―customer noise‖ by the companies.

For example, in November 2008, 1-800-Flowers.com‘s Director of Third Party Marketing wrote an e-mail to her Affinion contact complaining that ―we have had increasingly more frequent feedback from our own teams that your agents are telling our customers to call us....‖ She asked for Affinion‘s help ―to determine…how we can reduce the negative comments
from our customers back to our internal agents.

Affinion‘s Vice President of Relationship Management quickly responded to this e-mail. She wrote:
I am troubled by this report. This is a STRICT no-no in our centers. We tell agents not to do it and don‘t give them our client‘s phone numbers and so on. If we hear instances [of] it in our monitoring/test calls, they will ―fail‖ that call and get dinged on their incentive payments.

In spite of the elaborate precautions Affinion, Vertrue, and Webloyalty take to prevent negative feedback about their membership clubs from getting back to their partners, most, if not all, of the e-retailers partnered with Affinion, Vertrue, and Webloyalty know that the companies‘ aggressive sales tactics make many of their customers dissatisfied and angry.

Committee staff has reviewed thousands of pages of communications from angry consumers sent directly to the partners. Under standard procedures followed by all three companies, partners forward the complaints to Affinion, Vertrue, and Webloyalty for resolution.

Payments to the merchants are called bounties:

Payments based on the number of consumers who join an Affinion, Vertrue, or Webloyalty club are called ―bounties.

This payment system (also known as CPA, ―Cost Per Acquisition) provides a very straightforward incentive to the retailer to use more aggressive sales tactics. Every consumer ―join means an additional bounty payment usually ranging between $10 and $30.

When Webloyalty pitched its marketing program to Aloha Airlines in January 2006, it explained the method of payment and the potential partnership by stating, ―Aloha Airlines wins by getting…$$$ bounty from Webloyalty for every customer who elects to accept offer.

Bounties sound a lot like Rebates to me.

 

[CHR]

Jeez this really hit the news today:

Is Your Favorite Website Ripping You Off?

"Tricking customers … is not OK. It's not ethical, it's not right, and it's not the way business should be done in America," Sen. Rockefeller concluded. "American consumers should not have to worry that their favorite Web sites are ripping them off during the check-out process."

Feds: Top e-tailers profitting from billion-dollar Web scam

Words like "scam," "fraud," and "arrest" filled the air during a Senate hearing on Tuesday that focused on the controversial marketing companies that allegedly dupe consumers into paying monthly fees to join online loyalty programs.

Post Transaction Marketing Wall of Shame

But scores of even more well known ecommerce companies use these scams as well, including: 1800flowers, Buy.com, Classmates.com, Columbia House, Expedia, Hotels.com, Fandango, FTD, Hotwire, MovieTickets.com, Orbitz, Priceline, Shutterfly, Travelocity, US Airways and Vista Print. Each of these companies has received over $10 million in PTM revenue, according to the report.

Emphasis mine. No wonder 1-800 and FTD kept getting mentioned. Netted more than $10M each!

IMO they've both netted WAY more than that by doing business with their affiliate dOGs.

 

[Erlene]

Part of this hit the NBC Nightly News last night, among the logos splayed across the screen were FTD and 1800flowers.

I think even though we know the difference between FTD and FTD Florists Online many of our customers will mostly see it as FTD offending twice.

I wonder what the consumer backlash will be when it is all said and done. I'd love to think it would bring more business to local retailers (florists and others) but the American consumer is used to "scandals" like this and when the dust settles there is often no measurable impact to the offender's business.

 

[BOSS]

among the logos splayed across the screen were FTD and 1800flowers.

I wonder what the consumer backlash will be when it is all said and done. I'd love to think it would bring more business to local retailers (florists and others) but the American consumer is used to "scandals" like this and when the dust settles there is often no measurable impact to the offender's business.

True, but eliminating the connection by removing those same logo's as many have may be a good thing...

Or you could display this one...

 

[sfox]

True, but eliminating the connection by removing those same logo's as many have may be a good thing...

Or you could display this one...

Now that's funny:rofl::rofl: