Beware ezsver rw and the proflowers scam!
Posted: October 27th, 2009 | Author: Joe | Filed under: Scam | Tags: Opinion, proflowers, Rant, Scam, spending | 25 Comments »
I can’t believe it and I’m a bit embarrassed to admit it, but I was scammed. I used Proflowers.com recently to send flowers to my wife (our anniversary) and my mother (her birthday) and thought I got a great deal. The flowers were beautiful, and they seemed to last forever. It wasn’t until two months later that I realized I was scammed!
Here’s how it happened.
At the end of my order process, I was asked if I wanted to sign up for additional coupon offers from a 3rd party service. Since I make it a rule to try to spend as little as possible at all times (ask my wife), I selected “No thank you” and continued with my order.
Despite my having selected “No thank you”, I was enrolled in this bogus program anyway.
The program is called “Easy Saver“, and as near as I can tell they charge you $14.95 a month to grant you access to a web site that contains coupons.
The problem is that not only was I being billed for a service I wasn’t using, I was being billed for a service I didn’t even know about! I was never contacted by the 3rd party (Easy Saver) to congratulate me on my enrollment, much less notify me of how to make use of their program. They seem to exists solely for the purpose of skimming $14.95 off unsuspecting proflowers customers.
I’m lucky I noticed the $14.95 charge on my credit card with an odd business name next to it:
“$14.95 ezsver rw 1-800-355-1837″
It was only after I went back to the previous month that I really became suspicious. There I saw a charge for $3.95 – and that was the month after my proflowers purchase appeared on the credit card.
I called the 1-800 number to talk to “ezsver” and that’s when I discovered they were really “easy saver rewards”. I asked the customer representative who easy saver is and how they got my credit card number. She told me that they partner with a number of popular Internet and 1-800 companies, like proflowers…
All in all, there were 2 unauthorized purchases beginning 1 month after my proflowers purchase – 1 charge was a small, almost unnoticeable $3.95, and after that came the monthly $14.95.
I must say that the customer rep at easy saver was very pleasant and very helpful, and I was able to cancel my “subscription” as well as have the previous charges reversed without any problem. But the way the whole thing went down is what bothers me the most.
The fact that proflowers signed me up when I explicitly opted out, and the way that easy saver never sent any correspondence to inform me that I had been entered into a subscription service bothers me so much that I will not be using proflowers again, nor will I be recommending their services to others.
I too had the same thing happen. I called the number and had the charges stopped and was to be credited. Did this actually happen for you or anybody else or do I need to continue the fight? Thanks
Alex,
The company representative was very nice when I spoke to her on the phone, and the charges were reversed, so I actually didn’t end up paying for any of it but I would have if I had waited another month! And the whole idea of signing you up for a service without your knowledge is unethical, if not outright illegal.
I have had the same experience, I called the number on my charge card bill to find out what the charge was for, $1.95 was billed last month and $14.95 was on my statement this month. I’m trying to get the charges reversed. I will not be ordering or recommending ProFlowers anymore!! How can that be legal!!??
[...] sadly, I was a victim of a Proflowers scam. var addthis_language = ‘en’;var addthis_options = ‘email, favorites, digg, delicious, myspace, [...]
I apparently have been scammed as well as
all of the customers named above.
I have been charged $14.95 for 5 months as a
debit on my Checking account. Dec. 2009 thru
March 2010. I do not us this account except
for a few phone orders so was not caught.
I never signed up for this plan an request a
cancellation and a refund of $74.95.
I was happy with the flowers but this definately will keep me from every ordering
again.
Also, please cancel the numerus emails that
you send
I just found out about the charges to my account today when I was looking over my bank statement. I must have completely missed the $14.95 ez saver charge on my account in March (I ordered flowers in Feb. for Valentine’s Day), and I couldn’t figure out the charge I received a few days ago also from ez saver. I put “ezsaver rw” in google and came upon the this thread. It’s a good thing I did, or otherwise I may have not figured this out for a much longer time.
I will call ez saver tomorrow with the hopes of getting my money back.
Thank you to the person who started this thread so as to get the word out there about this issue.
You obviously do not understand how these programs work. There is no possible way to be enrolled in the program with out filling out your information. Many people do so unintentionally. It is not a scam, and many people are happily enrolled in it however, success is based on an individual basis. Read about the program so you can fully understand it. If you dont want to be in the program you dont have to be and the csr’s are more than happy to take care of you. (as you have evidently seen)
Beth,
How exactly does one unintentionally enter his information? I think that kind of proves my point that it is not clearly disclosed to the customer that he is enrolling in the program.
Beth doesn’t know what she’s talking about. i just found this website because i did a search after being SCAMMED MYSELF. I haven’t placed a proflowers order in over a year, and i just noticed a first charge this month fom “EZSVER RW” on my Credit Card.
Beth is completely incorrect in this case. It absolutely is a scam! You enter your information for a ProFlowers order and they forward that including your credit card information to Encore Marketing and Easy Saver Rewards. You will then be charged $14.95 a month until you catch it. If you call you credit card company and have them contact Easy Saver Rewards they will agree to refund the charges, MAKE SURE YOU HAVE A LIST OF DATES AND AMOUNTS OR THEY MAY TRY TO ONLY REFUND THE MOST RECENT ONES.
They will bill you
They are sneaky
They say they will refund… we will see
In my experience, they do refund. I’ve also seen a lot of posts on other forums indicating that they are true to their word regarding refunds. I think they really just prey on people who don’t pay attention… people who just pay the minimum every month and probably don’t notice that extra $14 a month is a new charge and not just more interest.
Thank you so much for posting about this. I too had the charges – 3 for $14.95 and an initial fee of $1.95. Beware when you call – the first guy I talked to said he could reverse the 2 most recent charges. I thanked him and all was well … until I researched my bank and found more. I called back, and the second lady was going to mention the 3rd $14.95 but not the $1.95 until I pointed it out. They promised to reverse it all and cancelled the membership. I guess we’ll see in 24-48 hours …
Beth is completely wrong! I did not accept the offer from Pro-Flowers to for the EZ savers Rewards. They were provided my information from Pro-flowers;as I am not a coupon person. Its a scam folks! The reason they are so polite in returning your money, its because they can keep on scamming the 10% (just a guess)of those people who may never detect the charges – A perfect scam is a continuing never ending scam that some will never detect. Bernie would be proud.
Yep! They got me – 17 TIMES!!! I have to say Rene at ProFlowers was very helpful, but it’s insane that I was charged 17 times and not one thing was sent to me and no one noticed that I wasn’t using the service at all. I guess it’s amazing to me that this was done without my consent. CHECK YOUR BILL and cancel your card from time to time just to kill bad credit charges. I think it’s time to do this again.
[...] Click Fraud Scam Hits The Big Time. A while ago I shared how I had been the victim of an unauthorized credit card billing scam after ordering some flowers from the Proflowers website. It seems that Proflowers is not the only [...]
[...] Click Fraud Scam Hits The Big Time. A while ago I shared how I had been the victim of an unauthorized credit card billing scam after ordering some flowers from the Proflowers website. It seems that Proflowers is not the only [...]
Along with many others, I noticed a 14.95 unauthorized charge on my credit card bill–and it was on the last 6 months’ bills. I had charged flowers from ProFlowers and somehow got signed up for a rewards membership program that I didn’t know I had joined.
I immediately cancelled my membership on the http://www.easysaverewards.com site then called 1-800-355-1837 to ask for a full refund. I talked with Chad (from India) who was very nice. He at first offered only 2 months’ refund, but when I asked for the full 6 month’s refund, he agreed to that. All I wound up paying was a $1.99 ‘trial’ fee for the month in which I joined–I decided to let them have the $2.
This scam apparently has been going on a long time–but they must be nicer about refunding, judging from others’ experiences in earlier emails when they had to talk to managment to get a refund of any sort. I’ll sure be more cautious in the future about clicking on any kind of offer and will certainly never order from ProFlowers again.
The proflowers site is really also the same site used by Sharis berries, (berries.com), Cherry Moon Farms, Red Envelope and several other companies.. It’s actually much worse than they let on, sometimes they have the flowers delivered by local florists, and rather than being straight from the grower they are trucked to regional warehouses.. plus their chocolate covered strawberries don’t even use real chocolate.
I was charged 13 times for a total of 149 dollars. They tried to first give me just a partial refund!! I had to insist and threaten a legal action in order to be reimbursed 100%.
Proflowers was the first listed search hit from Google for “online flowers”, so Proflowers must pay Google well. Luckily before ordering, I also searched Google for “Proflowers review rating” and found an alarming number of websites such as this one detailing problems with folks unknowingly enrolled in http://www.easysaverrewards.com/ which is described on their website as an exclusive partner for Proflowers and two other online retailers. All three of these retailers are clearly interlinked to each other and to easysaverrewards. Whether this practice is illegal or just skirts illegality (“buyer beware”) by cheerfully refunding to customers who complain is unknown. Whether I will buy from any of them, however, is known – NO.
Just today I noticed 14.95 to esvrs on my card and had the credit card company check the last six months. They have charged me 4 of the last 6 without my authorization. I reported it as fraud and am letting the credit card co. handle. I also will not be using proflowers again — and I’m a long standing client (no more).
I ordered flowers from 1-800-ProFlowers via web contact (Glenn Beck endorsed). I provided my e-mail and credit card information to purchase only flowers for Mommy-O on Mother’s Day. With just a few clicks I was now unknowingly enrolled in the EZ Saver program for $15.00 per month with recurring monthly billing. The endless e-mails from Pro-Flowers was bad enough but then months later I realized that I was enrolled in the EZ-Saver program through Pro-Flowers. Imagine that!!! $15.00 off delivery and you get crooked into a BS deal to boot. I finally called the Hajji operator to de-register and the BBB, now here we are. 4-7-11
They sent this back; 4-7-11
Dear Dan,
Thank you for contacting ProFlowers. Please accept my most sincere
apologies. I understand that you enrolled in our EasySaver Rewards partner
program and that enrollment in this program was not your intention. I have
called EasySaver Rewards on your behalf in order to cancel your membership
and obtain a refund. When I called I found that your membership has already
been cancelled and the refund of ( 1 months x $14.95 a month) has already
been applied. I then had them refund the additional charges of (XYZ) and $1.95, the full amount of fees charged to you for this program. In most cases you will see the refund appear on your billing statement in just a few days, however please allow 1-2 billing cycles for the refunds to process, depending on the terms of your specific card issuer. We have a partnership with EasySaver Rewards where we provide customers an opportunity to click on and enroll in their service from our ?order confirmation page? after placing an order with us. I?d like to apologize for any confusion you may have had over the enrollment process with this partner offer. (XYZ) credits will refund back to your credit card and the remaining will be issued by a check sent to the address you provided. If we can be of further assistance please do not hesitate to contact us.
Best Regards,
CS Sherry V (specialmembership@customercare.proflowers.com) Customer Care
Called and cancelled, notified CC Company of scam, Notified BBB, demamded refund. here we are
I fell for this too! I heard an ad on Sean hannity and 3 months after I order flowers for my girl, I see this charge show upon my credit card! WTH?!
I’ll never use proflowers again!
I just got a notification from my credit card company about a 14.95 charge to EZSVER RW. I thought that it was unusual so I looked into it. Thanks for all the posts and info. I will be calling the number tomorrow and cancelling my “subscription”. Totally disgusting that I’ve been getting charged for something I didn’t know I had signed up for. I have quite a few small charges a month that go on the card, so I didn’t even notice right away that I had been getting these charges. I never will be using Proflowers again because of this. I’m positive that I’ve never specifically allowed anyone besides Proflowers to authorize the use of my credit card.