By Sally Voth -- svoth@nvdaily.com
HARRISONBURG -- When a 15-year-old Frederick County girl's $11 Christmas gift for her mother turned into a $180 bill that she couldn't get resolved, her father turned to the federal court system.
David Scott Stryker is suing Shopper Discounts, also known as Shoppers Discounts & Rewards and a subsidiary of Webloyalty.com Inc., and Woman Within, also known as Redcats USA Inc., on behalf of his daughter, Danielle.
The lawsuit, filed Thursday, accuses the defendants of running an Internet fraud scheme.
"The uniform business practice at issue in this case is as simple as it is deceptive and devious," it says.
Danielle Stryker bought a $10.98 gift for her mother from Woman Within using a debit card on Dec. 2, 2009, the suit says. To complete the transaction, she had to provide her name, debit card number and expiration date.
A pop-up window appeared on Danielle's computer screen saying, "Your purchase is complete. Click here to claim your $10.00 Gift Voucher for your next purchase," according to the complaint.
She discovered last month that her checking account had since been billed $12 a month to be a member of a rewards program, for a total of $168, it says.
Danielle's mother repeatedly called a toll-free number, attempting to get her money back, but was unsuccessful.
The complaint is filed as a class-action lawsuit.
"The putative Class is so numerous as to make it impracticable to join all members of the class as plaintiff," it says. "Webloyalty has uniformly accessed Class members' credit and debit card accounts to assess its fees and Woman Within has aided and abetted or conspired with Webloyalty to do so."
At $12 a month, many possible plaintiffs might not know the extent of the issue, the suit says, but when combined with others in the class, the "Defendants have reaped huge monetary gains" through the alleged scheme.
E-mails sent to those who click on the pop-up inform them of the monthly charge if they don't cancel within three days, but usually the e-mails appear to be spam, according to the lawsuit.
"This slight-of-hand scheme by Webloyalty and Woman Within is fraudulent, is the basis for the theft, obtaining money by false pretenses ... the equivalent of each Class member having his or her pocket picked of up to $12.00 per month," the suit alleges.
It accuses Woman Within of getting "kickbacks" from Webloyalty for passing along customers' information.
The lawsuit seeks punitive damages, court costs and attorneys' fees and other relief found to be proper.
The defendants have not filed a response.
Please contact us if you have questions or need legal assistance.
Tucker Griffin Barnes P.C.
Charlottesville, Virginia
434-973-7474
I think information that you are sharing with us via blog post is right.Its very difficult to detect or find fraudulent online ordering activity and get back lost money over Internet fraud.Its purely unsafe to buy any kind of product over online shopping websites.But still business of online shopping increases day by day.
ReplyDeleteThank you Mr. Stryker for filing this lawsuit for your daughter and for the many, many people like myself who have also been scammed by web loyalty.com. I just discovered 26 months of charges for $12/mo and I am disgusted to know that these people make money scamming others. Too bad our government doesn't do a better job protecting us.
ReplyDeleteBy the way, my personal info was shared by Ticketmaster.com, and I will try to avoid doing business with them, which is hard since they have a monopoly in the ticket sales business! Go figure.