Groucho

Agreed...these things are predatory, clearly designed to trick you into signing up for a "service" you don't want. I imagine these companies rake in big bucks from people who don't check their monthly statements carefully.

chanster

Unfortunately, I see these things all over the place..but DDD's seem particurly aggressive. Thumbs Down...

Movie_Man

This is an unfortunate black-eye for DDD. I've encountered their "upsells" after placing an order, and hopefully I have correctly declined them all. The method they are using may not be illegal, but definitely anti-consumer. Having a pop-up link you to a new page to sign up for an offer is one thing, but the way this is designed is to catch you off-guard into inadvertantly clicking the wrong button and getting charged for "services" that you never wanted.

C_Fletch

IMHO I rarley order online and when I do I check every possible avenue to verify that the online seller is reputable. These actions taken by DDD are not reputable IMHO, they are deceptive at the very least considering just about everyone I know immediatley closes those popups. They don't think twice about. Whoever works for DDD marketing department should really think ahead about "upsell" strategies especially when it is just going to alienate your already loyal customer base when it does go wrong. I will not order from them.

Regards,
Chet

DeepDiscount

Dear DVD Talk Members,

I want to update you on this situation.

We featured an upsell pop-up on our web site for nearly the past year. Recently, one of the offers was for a phone card, however, all of our upsells give clear opt-outs and closing the pop-up window does not automatically transfer the credit card information. We have not yet determined that the charges from PEC came from a pop-up at DeepDiscountDVD.com. Our customer service representative was mistaken when he said that the charge came from us. PEC was not the company selling the phone card in the pop-up at DeepDiscountDVD.com. We are investigating to see if PEC is in any way affiliated with the phone card offer that we ran. However, we do not believe this to be the case.

As I said, we have had a pop-up running for nearly a year and have never had a problem previously. Anytime someone has inadvertenly signed up for an offer and notified us we have contacted our marketing partner and had the charges reversed that same day. If it is determined that any of these charges came from an upsell at DeepDiscountDVD.com we assure you that the charges will be reversed immediately.

We do respect all of your concerns regarding this matter and take them very seriously. We have removed the upsell pop-ups and are reevaluating their use on our web site.

Thank you all for your continued business and I assure you that we will continue to monitor this situation closely. We apologize for any inconvenience that you have been caused.

Sincerely,

David Barker

Laser Movies

I agree a 100% with your statement and told Deep Discount something similar last year when I accidently clicked one of these offers. They didn't seem to care about my compalints and I cut back on my orders to them after that. I am glad to hear they removed the pop ups and hope they will not return. I am surprised it has taken months for this to happen. I went to their site to order DVDs and not to get enrolled into a book club or surrender my personal information to another company.

Laser Movies

Your statement about charge removal is not true. I contacted your store after inadvertently getting signed up for an offer and was given information to contact the company who ran the offer myself. Your company never offered any help other than telling me who to contact at Doubleday Book Club. Also it took me over a month to get the charges removed by them.

Also you say there were never any problems with the pop ups? I guess your company didn't care about the problems customers had with them. I think they should have been designed to prevent accidental sign ups. And the customer should have been required to give their personal information themselves if they wanted to sign up for an offer. Also a person should receive notification and confirmation of an order. Instead of being surprised with a mysterious charge on your credit card.

DeepDiscount

Dear LaserMovies,

I apologize for the difficulties that you listed above. I am unaware of the specific situation that you mention here, but it is obvious that we did not handle it properly.

I was unable to find an email address here to contact you directly. If you would, please contact me at [email protected] and I will look into this issue further.

Again, I apologize for any inconvenience that this may have caused you.

Sincerely,

David Barker

pagemaster7

PEC "Planet Earth Communications", or in latin "the company the screwed up my day", is the agent for a company called "US Phone". "US Phone" is a advertiser on DeepDiscount. I confirmed this by calling "PEC", who finally came to their senses and told me where the billing started. I then called DeepDiscount and confirmed that "US Phone" is one of their advertisers. Now tomorrow I will call "US Phone" who by law(in theory) has to tell me what site authorized the transaction.

sandman1

Does anyone remember if there was an ATT Internet advertisment on DDD site? I started receiving mysterious charges back in November from them on my credit card, and they had all info like my phone number and home address. They, too, refused to tell me where those charges originated from insisting that the application was filled up "somewhere on the Internet". I disputed and reversed them, but I could never imagine a legitimate business could rip people off like this.

eau

What the laws say about one company passing credit card numbers (not just personal info) to another company without the CC owners consent?

It doesn't make sense that they can legally toss your CC # around like that.

vaporware

I've had maybe over a $1000.00 worth of purchases from DDD and was always very satisfied. Unforunately because of this i have to review all my statements from the past 6 months. Yeah, yeah, i should have all along i know. But i have one card that i use exclusively for internet purchases. I never expected my info to be transfered to a service i did not request. DDD guy, i go to your site to buy dvd's, nothing more. If i wanted another product i'd go to their site.

This has forced me to reconsider any future purchases from your company and that is unforunate.

chanster

Well, it may not illegal, but it seems to be a violation of their own TOS:

If they are transferring this information to the offer, it is a clear violation of their TOS. Now some may claim that the second paragraph "without your permission" could mean that by clicking on the ad, you are giving permission. But by pre-populating the forms, they seem like they have transferred information without your consent.

C_Fletch

pagemaster7
"PEC "Planet Earth Communications", or in latin "the company the screwed up my day", is the agent for a company called "US Phone". "US Phone" is a advertiser on DeepDiscount."

DeepDiscountDVD
"We have not yet determined that the charges from PEC came from a pop-up at DeepDiscountDVD.com. Our customer service representative was mistaken when he said that the charge came from us. PEC was not the company selling the phone card in the pop-up at DeepDiscountDVD.com. We are investigating to see if PEC is in any way affiliated with the phone card offer that we ran. However, we do not believe this to be the case."

Seems like we are getting 2 different stories here?

Movie_Man

I placed a new order today at DDD and can confirm that the "upsell" offer at the end of the order process is thankfully gone.

new2theplace

I haven't been hit with this, but stuff like this really hacks me off. In fact, I can't believe that logging into so many places on the web where my personal info/finanaces are involved (like eBay for example) aren't even secure.

In any case, this is just another reason that I use my Amex Privatepayments one-use CC#s a lot.... but I guess I should probably use them even more

brez

I have noticed several times that the pop up offers after placing an order on DDD were designed so that a person could easily accept the offer when they thought they were closing the window. I always close them by clicking the "X" in the upper right corner. This has bothered me, not just becuase the pop-ups are a pain, but becuase they semed to be designed to deceive the customers. I continued to use DDD, when their price is the lowest, but I should think about this in the future.

Mike

Merin

DDD's while aggravating are not the most aggressive pop-up ads I've seen. That award goes to a general forum I visited where they had an ad pop-up when you got to the main page, when you clicked on the section you wanted to visit, and then another when you tried to read a particular thrread, etc. That forum didn't have lot of posts on it. Wonder why?

Hal2000

About the culpability of DDD

I think DDD has been around long enough to know that they don’t need to squander their good reputation on this kind of mess. I really believe that they will clean this up properly and in good time. Like any business, they are a bureaucracy and they are probably putting out fires as I leisurely type this, so I would give them a chance to research this, re-engineer their site and do whatever they need to do to restore confidence. The first post was only May 1. Give them a chance.

About card statements and checking accounts

I just had a relatively minor incident with an online company that I have never heard of entitled KAGI.com. I received a charge to my checking account through my combination ATM/debit card for which I could not account. The first baffling issue is that I have never used the debit card function of this card! The second baffling issue is that, when I told the bank and they reversed the charge, it was later determined that the charge originated in Indonesia!

I don't know anything about KAGI.com, but the story is about checking all of your accounts and statements on an ongoing basis. This case is probably a very large fraud out of Indonesia, a sweltering cesspool of sleazy islands happy to harbor members of Al Qaeda, involving a card number randomizing software that creates charges and remembers ones that go through while deleting the misses.

The moral of the story is to constantly check your statements.

bobletteross

The calling card scam that I got sucked into on DDD was for a company doing business under SEVERAL NAMES. I wouldn't say that DDD was hiding anything. I have had excellent customer service from them in the past and especially in regards to this pop-up "special reward" offer after checking out. My credit card showed $48.79 billed to Amr Ld Service.

THERE ARE NO POP-UP offers on DDD as of yesterday, when I placed my last order.

I believe that DDD has been hoodwinked by these phoney...(pun intended) name shifting weasels.

I was lucky enough to find reports of this scam (searched the web for " Amr Ld Service" )on www.ripoffreport.com that had a phone number to get me right to customer service of the American Phone Co. They issued me a credit immediately and promised to cancel any charges/service to my cc in the future.

DDD customer service took it on themselves on my behalf to secure the credit on my card was indeed processed.

I agree that no reputable on-line site should allow the private information of their customers to be given to ANY THIRD PARTY! A "free offer" should contain ALL the details and require seperate and informed consent on the part of the "purchaser".

The quick action by DDD has convinced me that I need to continue to support this small no frills web retailer that has the best consistant prices anywhere on the web.

We all, the buying public and retailers, need to be wary of any and all new scams out there.

I would encourage ALL folks to get internet access to your credit card/bank card on-line statements asap. Check them regularly! I check mine daily now that I have been scammed.

Now lets sit back and enjoy our dvds!


BTW...DDD gave me a $.79 credit when the price of the Brazil Criterion edition mysteriously when down two days after I ordered it (I did ask them to)