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!!??
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 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.
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