“I’m just off the phone with Complete Savings trying to get a refund of transactions over six months,” begins a mail from a reader called Mark. “It looks like I’ll be successful,” he says.
“Only that I just cleared my credit card I may not have noticed this for another few months,” he continues.
He wrote to us because he noticed that we had written about the company in 2021. “I find it crazy that they are able to get away with doing what they do,” he says.
He inadvertently signed up when buying tickets online last May and “had no idea I signed up to a subscription with them until today – I’ve been getting €18 taken off my credit card for the last 6 months (€108) – I imagine some people have been caught out for a lot more. Maybe it’s something you could raise awareness on again, particularly heading into the Christmas period when people are buying gifts. I never heard of them until today.”
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By coincidence we also heard from another Mark, who had read a much more recent article we wrote about Complete Savings.
We are delighted to report that that article had saved him a lot more money.
“I read your article last Sunday and discovered we had paid €15 for 23 months to Complete Savings,” his mail starts. “Thanks for the heads up.”
He says the “good news is the money came back within three working days”.
He wasn’t sure how he had signed up for the service but reckons one of his children may have inadvertently done it when they ordered a takeaway almost two years ago.
“I went to our bank and asked could they update their apps to flag all recurring subscriptions in a manner you can see what they are,” he writes.
“In addition I asked to include the four-digit MCC (merchant category code) and description to the app and statement to help you identify the merchant,” he says. “They said they would look at it.”
He wonders if this is something Pricewatch could promote “to get all banks to provide this basic information to improve our financial literacy”.
We are happy to promote such a thing, but we should also remind people what Complete Savings is.
It is multinational, self-styled, web-loyalty scheme that people sign up for – sometimes without being entirely aware that is what they are doing – after they make purchases on partner sites.
It promises cash back to members when they shop on certain sites, which might make sense for some people if they know they have signed up to the scheme.
What is troubling is how easy it seems to be to sign up by accident. If you buy a product on a site that has a relationship with Complete Savings, you might be presented with the chance to avail of a discount on your next purchase. You are then prompted to re-enter your credit or debit card details – and by doing that you have signed up to the scheme.
We have contacted the company on many occasions in the past and have been told that people “must enter their name, email address, postal address and their credit or debit card details on the online sign-up page” and at no point “is any data transferred to the Complete Savings sign-up form from their previous purchase”.
The good news is that when people sign up inadvertently and contact the company, it does offer refunds – as our recent readers’ experiences show.
Complete Savings and its parent company, Web Loyalty, have been criticised in the United States and the UK (and on this page) over many years. I and in October it made the news in the UK when the British Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) found a number of ads run by Web Loyalty to be misleading.
It highlighted how pop-ups appeared after consumers bought products online offering cashback of about £20. The ads said shoppers could click on a link “to claim the above reward, credited on to your card, when you next place an order” with the retailer.
Text in a smaller font added, “By tapping above, you can join our partner programme for £18/month and claim your reward.”
The advertising authority said it was unclear that the pop-ups which featured on multiple well-known sites were coming from a third party, and that by clicking “continue” some people may have been under the impression they were finalising their transaction with the original retailer.
It also said people may have been under the impression they had earned a free cashback reward based on the order they had just placed, something that was not the case.
In response, Web Loyalty said it believed it was clear to shoppers that their order with the partner website was complete, that the pop-ups were offered by a third-party service and that it was advertising signing up for a paid-for scheme.
Following the ASA’s ruling, the ads as they currently appear in the UK are banned and Web Loyalty must make future marketing communications clearer for shoppers. The ASA also mandated that any online retailer which goes into business with Web Loyalty must make sure the ads are clearly displayed as coming from a third-party subscription scheme.
There have been no such developments in Ireland as yet.
