A reader called Calvin emailed me to say: “I recently came across your reporting from several years ago on Complete Savings and wanted to reach out, as the issue appears to still be ongoing.
“I’ve discovered a recurring €18 charge from completesave.ie on my account, which I never knowingly signed up for,” he says.
When he first discovered the payment he was alarmed and contacted his bank’s fraud department.
“After speaking with AIB’s fraud team, I was told this is often linked to ‘opt-in’ subscriptions during purchases – in my case, likely through Ticketmaster,” he says.
READ MORE
“What’s particularly concerning is that I don’t recall ever sharing my payment details with this third party, which raises serious questions about how these companies are obtaining and using customer financial data.”
Calvin says that based on his online research, “many others in Ireland are experiencing the same issue. It seems like a practice that persists despite previous exposure. I thought this might be worth revisiting, given its continued impact.”
As Calvin says, we have covered Complete Savings before and on many occasions. The first time we featured Complete Savings on this page was in March 2014, not much more than a year after the company had started doing business in this country.
Complete Savings 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 if they shop on certain sites and it may well be a good service as long as people know they have signed up for the site and are happy to have done so.
[ 28 ways to save money on your foreign holiday this summerOpens in new window ]
It is not so well and good if people sign up for the service without being entirely up to speed with what is going on.
And how might a person sign up without being fully aware of what they are doing? It is easier than you might think.
A person might buy something from a site that has a relationship with Complete Savings and as part of the buying process they might be offered the chance to avail of a discount on their next purchase. The person might then re-enter their credit or debit card details and sign up to the scheme without being entirely aware of what they have done.
The problem is not Ireland-specific and Complete Savings and its parent company, Webloyalty, have attracted significant negative publicity in the United States and the UK over many years.
We have contacted the company on many occasions 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”.
We accept that completely.
The good news is that – generally speaking – if people sign up inadvertently and contact the company, it does offer refunds once the person has “not made use of the benefits the Complete Savings programme offers”.
And that is a very easy thing to prove. If you have never used the service you can quite reasonably seek a refund.
