Always Be Cautious when It Comes to the Online Use of Your Credit Card

Store-It Foods does not place you on any unexpected mailing lists, we do not supply your address or other personal information to other advertisers, and we most certainly do NOT share your credit card information with other vendors.  Unfortunately, such is not the case with all online merchants.  One of our customers is here to share his experience.

Lots of you, and me, buy things online. This is a good thing and safe BUT, something has been going on that you need to know about. Lots of online sites, and good ones, fell in to a practice that goes something like this:

You make a purchase using your debit or credit card. All goes well and the purchase is complete. After the purchase is complete you will get a kind of pop up window that congratulates you and offers you a coupon for what ever. All you need to do is put in your email address and you will be sent to the site where you can download the coupon for printing. What happens is that you just signed up for a "webloyalty" program with a recurring payment of $10 or $15 or $20 or something along that line. How are you charged? By putting in your email address the company you just made the purchase from will send the other company your credit card information. Can they? Yes, you didn't see the "small print".

Now, I am real careful but it did happen to me when I got some of those business cards from a compnay selling such cards ovrer the web. Big name companies have been doing this like, hotels.Com and others. Now, it is going to hit the fan soon but you need to be aware. "Eighty-eight online retailers made over $1 million by partnering with these Affinion, Vertrue, and Webloyalty, according to the report. Of these, 19 made over $10 million and one, Classmates.Com, made over $70 million."

Here is just a short list of some of the companies participating: "1-800-Flowers.Com; AirTran Holdings; Classmates.Com; Continental Airlines; FTD; Fandango; Hotwire; Intelius; MovieTickets.Com; Orbitz Worldwide; Pizza Hut;Priceline (NSDQ: PCLN).Com; Redcats USA; Shutterfly; US Airways Group; and VistaPrint USA."

Don't click on the coupon links. AND check your bank statements and/or PayPal for reoccurring payments. Mine was on PayPal and the good thing about PayPal is that they send you an email when your reoccurring payment is about to happen and you can just go to your account and cancel it with one click. Your Bank will most likely NOT warn you, so you need to check your statements.

- R. Wannamaker, November 2009

Now, we at Store-It Foods cannot verify the research that was done in compiling this list of companies, and, by the time you read this, some, or all of them, even if they were doing it, may have dropped this practice entriely. Nevertheless, this is a good warning for those of us who do shop online.  In fact, it demonstrates the fact that whether shopping at a "brick and mortar" store or shopping online, we always need to be cautious as to how we are using and sharing our credit information.  It is indeed a good idea to keep track of what is being charged to our cards.