I Got SCAMMED!!

Let me preface this by saying I am extremely organized when it comes to my finances. I check my bank account at least twice daily, and especially on pay days (TODAY!!). Well today I get on and notice a charge of $12.00 from a "Reservations Rewards." I think long and hard about what I must have spent an even 12 bucks on, to no avail.

So I decide to Google "Reservation Rewards" to try to figure out what it is I bought, and this is what I find:

"On November 2, 2004, I purchased airline tickets from the website onetravel.com.

On my most recent credit card bill, I noticed a charge for $9 for a transaction on 12/2 posted on 12/5 for WLIRESERVATIONREWARDS 800-7327031 CT. I had no idea what the charge was, and was certain I hadn’t signed up for any “reservation rewards” program, so I did a web search for the phone number for the item. Apparently, many other people have had the same exact charge for the same item without ever having ordered it.

I called the company to dispute the charge, and they insisted that I had signed up for some kind of rewards service when I purchased airline tickets. I insisted that I had never signed up for any such service, but they claimed they had sent me three emails confirming the service, which apparently is a monthly subscription for $9 per month which gives you discounts on some products or services online.

When I complained that I was sure I had never signed up for any such service, they said that they had “millions of satisfied customers” and that the complaints were just a few.

Since I maintain my own mail server, I was able to search back over the last 60 days of mail logs, and there was no record of any email originating from this company. Even if such an email had been caught by a spam filter, it would still show up in the mail log. I am thus certain that they never sent any confirmation emails.

Finally, I threatened to contact my state attorney general, and at that point they agreed to refund the $9 and cancel my subscription.

I checked the Connecticut Better Business Bureau website for this company, which goes under a dozen aliases, and saw that there have been many complaints along similar lines."

Immediately I picked up my phone and called them. I was fairly heated during the call, and asked what kind of business they are running. She stated that I had gone to orbitz.com and purchased airline tickets. I told her that was incorrect, I said that I had bought recent airline tickets from Southwest Airline's website. Then she corrected herself and said it was movie tickets from movietickets.com. I told her that yes, I had purchased 4 tickets to The Dark Knight a couple weeks ago. She said that I had also signed up for the Reservations Rewards program by putting my email in twice. I told her that there was no way in hell that I would have signed up for anything like that.

She cancelled my "subscription" and told me my money would be refunded (which I will follow on, it's only pending right now) pretty quickly, probably knowing how heated I was.

I then proceeded to ask her and her supervisor how they sleep at night knowing that their paychecks come from stolen money, to which they both responded that they sleep very well. I told them that their company was b.s. and all over Google searches as a fradulous company.

How in the HELL do companies like this run? How do they not get caught and shut down by our government?? If I didn't check my account daily, I never would have caught this, and they would have just swiped 12 bucks from me.

I write this to warn all of you, and to advise you to check your account daily and to also be careful when purchasing things online.

I will NEVER EVER EVER again use www.movietickets.com, and I advise all of you not to. If this stops one other person from credit card fraud, then I am successful. Don't let people make a living off of your hard work!