Just saw this GREAT Article from a very cool website called “Marketing Vox”.
It seems that a little over 250 MILLION dollars worth of “Shady” continuity income has been made by companies like Classmastes.com, FTD, PizzaHit, and about 450 other retailers that do business online.
Here’s a direct quote from the article:
The report details purchase procedures in which consumers rarely realize they are signing up for a monthly club membership while buying seemingly unrelated products, such as movie tickets, plane tickets, or flowers. This is because the additional purchase is couched in deceptive offers for coupons or savings and does not always require th consumer to re-enter credit card information, the Commerce Committee said.
450 Retailers
There are about 450 retailers that have used the three companies’ services, including household names such as 1-800 Flowers, AirTran Holdings, Avon.com, Classmates.com, Continental Airlines, FTD, Fandango, Hotwire, Intelius, Movietickets.com, Orbitz, Pizza Hut, Priceline.com; Restaurants.com, Shutterfly and US Airways, according to the report.
All together, 88 e-retailers have made more than $1 million through partnering with Affinion, Vertrue, and Webloyalt, and 19 others have made more than $10 million.
The full article is here:
http://www.marketingvox.com/senate-sniffs-out-shady-direct-marketing-045539/
After you read it, come back here and let me know how you feel about these seemingly “Mainstream Companies” and their involvement in these sorts of “Undisclosed Continuity” programs.
Sound off!
{ 9 comments… read them below or add one }
Scandalous!!!
The cell phone rip-offs where you get enrolled somehow in answering surveys, etc,
for $9.95 per month must be related to this. I got caught in 2 of these scams with AT&T Wireless. Fortunately, if you wade through your 25 page cell phone bill and discover the charges, they will refund the money if you call them on it.
Forced continuity = Deception and Fraud. No rationalizing from anyone, including internet marketing gurus can change that!
Thanks for the feedback Mike!
I don’t think “Forced Continuity” has the right name. It should really be “Trial Continuity”, right? Having said that, I think HIDDEN Continuity is an Evil that scummy marketers should burn in hell for.
250 million? That’s a complete joke.
I know advertisers who do that in a year. Don’t kid yourself by listening to people who know nothing about the CPA world.
…Some offers are alright, some offers are bad. It’s a known fact that continuity programs that enroll you in more than one different program are very unethical. But due to the competitive nature of the CPA world this is what advertisers feel they need to do to give the biggest payouts and get the biggest affiliates.
Simple as that. Things need to change – or they’ll be changed by heavy lawsuits. All big affiliates agree. The model isn’t bad, the practice in which it’s carried out is bad.
Regardless if you really want to know what’s going on don’t listen to Dennis Yu or idiots who think that think they know the CPA world. Until you make 6 or 7 figures in the CPA world you can not make a post trying to “out” all the “dirty” aspects of it.
…Everyone is such a fame whore. Damn it.
Zach
@Romson – Check your adsense ads, lol. What are they pimping?
Also there is usually a clause that says: “you will be charged at the then current price”. Did you notice the “then current” part? This means if you paid $29.95 for something they can (and usually do) jump it up on the next bill. Yes… I was a telemarketer for about a week. Talk about hell on earth!
I take it your never going back to SN. But the question is when are you going to create a rival product to it? I loved your presentation style and how you always seemed to be having fun while at the same time empowering us mortals with a wealth of marketing knowledge delivered with a sprinkling humor and a large slice of commonsense . Your doing the whole internet marketing sector a disservice by not jumping back in to the ring.
Please Andrew – we have to complete the process of extracting all video related knowledge from his brain first.
“…scummy marketers…”
That may be redundant. I’ve seen too many marketers of all sizes who seem to have as their only standard for what’s acceptable is how much money they can make.