Are you accidentally paying for a loyalty programme and what can be done to stop it?

Are you one of the people paying a company called Complete Savings €15 a month without realising it and without getting any benefit from it? Would you know it if you were?
Here are three stories we have heard from readers over the past while that might help you find out.
“My granddaughter has had money taken from her bank account at the rate of €15 per month for the past seven months, a total of €105, by a company called Complete Savings,” one story began.
While the reader’s granddaughter was visiting him she asked him to look at a mysterious payment being taken from her bank account.
“I discovered it has been taken from her bank account each month for the past seven months. She is not aware of having signed up to this payment or giving her permission to have this money taken from her bank account.”
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Our reader did some research and found that “It appears that when individuals make purchases online, some companies have some affiliation with Complete Savings and the individuals are asked if they want to receive money off offers in the future. It appears that [many] are not aware of this payment, initially in any event [and] don’t avail of any money-off offers, so they are paying the €15 per month for absolutely nothing.”
Another reader bought a bus ticket with a private operator in September and last week noticed a payment heading in the direction of completesavings.
He spotted the payment after a month.
Another reader was not so lucky and sent us details of more than 70 payments spanning five years that he had sent the company without being aware of it and certainly getting nothing back for it.
Now, 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.
So who or what is Complete Savings? Well, 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.
What Complete Savings promises is cash back to members if they shop on certain sites. And that is well and good if members first know they have signed up for the site and second are happy to have done so.
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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 would people do that? It is remarkably easy. Let’s say you buy a product on a site that has a relationship with Complete Savings. As the process continues you might be offered the chance to avail of a discount on your next purchase. So, without giving it too much thought, you re-enter your credit or debit card details and, hey presto, you have signed up to the scheme.
The problem is not unique to this country. Complete Savings and its parent company, Web Loyalty, 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”.
The good news is that – generally speaking – if people sign up inadvertently and contact the company, it does offer refunds once they person has “not made use of the benefits the Complete Savings programme offers”.
And that is a very easy thing to prove.
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One of the reasons it is worth revisiting this story this week is because the company behind completesavings.ie – Web Loyalty – made headlines in the UK when the advertising watchdog there announced it was banning pop-up ads that offer customers cashback.
The British Advertising Standards Authority said it had found a number of adverts run by Web Loyalty to be misleading.
It noted that the offending pop-ups appeared after consumers bought products online and were offering cashback of about £20.
The ads said shoppers could click on a link “to claim the above reward, credited onto your card, when you next place an order” with the retailer.
Text in a smaller font added that “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.
It has also mandated that any online retailer who goes into business with Web Loyalty must make sure the ads are clearly displayed as coming from a third-party subscription scheme.
Now this begs an obvious question.
What about the Republic of Ireland?
We sent a query to the Irish advertising watchdog and at the time of writing were awaiting a response.