Power Sellers Unite

jjj525 · Joined: 08 Apr 2009 Posts: 354

Link

U.S. Senate report has revealed that retailers (a number of which you may already know and trust), have accepted as much as $792 million to share customers' credit-card information with direct marketing companies. Could your card number have been one that was shared? Would you have known?

- 1-800-Flowers.com
- Buy.com
- Classmates.com
- Columbia House
- Confi-Check
- Expedia/Hotels.com
- Fandango
- FTD
- Hotwire
- InQ
- Intellius
- MovieTickets.com
- Orbitz
- Priceline
- Redcats USA
- Shutterfly
- Travelocity
- US Airways
- VistaPrint
- Yahoo
- Avon
- Barnes & Noble
- eHarmony
- Half.com
- Pizza Hut
- TimeLife and
- Victoria's Secret

cohibastore.com · Joined: 14 Sep 2006 Posts: 4908

Good article - Thanks

newsites · Joined: 11 Jul 2005 Posts: 81

"American consumers shouldn't have to worry that their favorite websites are ripping them off during the checkout process," Chairman John D. Rockefeller said about programs such as WebLoyalty. The Senator launched an investigation into such programs, and released a list of ecommerce companies that participated in the programs. Among those named were eBay's Half.com site, eBay vendor ChannelAdvisor, as well as Buy.com and Tiger Direct.

I wrote about Marketworks' use of WebLoyalty in 2006 (ChannelAdvisor subsequently acquired Marketworks) and spoke to one of eBay's largest sellers at the time about his thoughts on participating in WebLoyalty despite consumer complaints. more.. link to news article

DaLizardsLair · Joined: 15 Feb 2009 Posts: 4780

Perhaps online merchants should start stating that they do NOT share credit card information.

Of course, for most of us, we couldn't if we would, since we never have that information to begin with.

Excellent article. Thanks for sharing it with us.

DaLizardsLair · Joined: 15 Feb 2009 Posts: 4780

There's already a thread about this....

http://www.powersellersunite.com/viewtopic.php?p=284360#284360

elgato · Joined: 24 Feb 2005 Posts: 17237 Location: Texas

Buyers on eBay and Half.com were among those exposed to companies that are now under investigation by a United States Senate committee for exploiting consumers' expectations about online shopping to trick them into joining their membership clubs.

According to the Senate report, Affinion, Vertrue, and Webloyalty and their ecommerce partners earned over $1.4 billion in revenue with their "misleading" tactics. The report includes Half.com and eBay vendors and sellers as companies that partnered with these firms, including ChannelAdvisor, Buy.com and Tiger Direct. Vendio also participated in the Webloyalty program as recently as July.

While consumer complaints were rampant over such programs (WebLoyalty was the target of a class-action lawsuit filed in Massachusetts in 2006), the compensation for participating in such programs was apparently too good to pass up, for some.
more.. link to news article

mojavelyn

jjj525 wrote (View Post): › docWrite("quote")Link

U.S. Senate report has revealed that retailers (a number of which you may already know and trust), have accepted as much as $792 million to share customers' credit-card information with direct marketing companies. Could your card number have been one that was shared? Would you have known?

- 1-800-Flowers.com
- Buy.com
- Classmates.com
- Columbia House
- Confi-Check
- Expedia/Hotels.com
- Fandango
- FTD
- Hotwire
- InQ
- Intellius
- MovieTickets.com
- Orbitz
- Priceline
- Redcats USA
- Shutterfly
- Travelocity
- US Airways
- VistaPrint
- Yahoo
- Avon
- Barnes & Noble
- eHarmony
- Half.com
- Pizza Hut
- TimeLife and
- Victoria's Secret

And how many of these also use mass-marketing 3rd party spammers, tht when you opt out your name gets put on the porn list?

mojavelyn · Posted: Thu Nov 19, 2009 11:03 am Post subject:

This could cost ebay and partners a pretty penny.

jjj525 · Joined: 08 Apr 2009 Posts: 354

In the future Paypal,Google or other checkout systems may give out consumer info to other parties.They can change their stand on any time.

Sellers who accepting checkout by Amazon are at risk of using the data gathered by Amazon to market products directly on Amazon website cutting off the seller.

Laws should be passed to prevent this type of data transfer without consumer approval in written.

But still in UK T-mobile customers data were sold by employees to any third parties they can find because the fine is only £5,000 if they are caught.Very scary.

Link

Patty00 · Joined: 13 Dec 2005 Posts: 1018

I hope they come down hard on these companies and make an example of them. We have no protection right now...we're sitting ducks!

elgato · Joined: 24 Feb 2005 Posts: 17237 Location: Texas

Related update:

"E-retail grows by double digits again as average ticket finally rises"

There were more signs of strength in online retailing in April, according to MasterCard Advisors SpendingPulse report, including the first increase in average ticket since the economy went into freefall in September 2008.

E-commerce grew 15.6% in April, the sector’s ninth consecutive month of double-digit growth. “E-commerce growth continues to outpace brick-and-mortar sales,” says the MasterCard report, which did not provide an estimate for changes in stores sales or overall retail sales.

A positive note in the e-commerce report was a 0.2% year-over-year increase in the average price of an online purchase. That was the first time average ticket had gone up year over year since September 2008, when the collapse on Wall Street sent consumer spending into a tailspin.

“E-commerce, luxury and electronics continue to drive high year-over-year increases,” says Michael McNamara, vice president of research and analysis for SpendingPulse. “Most of the weakness in April’s data can be attributed to Easter occurring a week earlier this year, shifting demand into March. For those weaker categories, most notably apparel, April and March taken together yielded a slightly positive year-over year growth over April and March 2009. Pricing throughout showed a steady and sustaining strength.”

more.. link to news article