"In addition, from time to time, We may market certain third party services through Our Site. Should you choose to accept an offer from a third party, We will pass your relevant Personal Information, which may include your name, address, and credit/debit card number, to that third party."

http://www.pizzahut.com/PrivacyPolicy.aspx

They say "The Web Loyalty program provides value to customers at a time when they need it most."

I wrote about it here: [www.ericabaker.com]

Very handy for crap like this - but not handy enough when I'm ordering a stupid pizza and don't want to spend another 2 minutes generating a one-shot credit card number.

Why would a business even consider supporting this type of advertising?!

I got dinged on this crap with a buy.com purchase - never bought another item from them after that. I hope the ten million is helping them recoup their losses from screwing their real customers over.

basically its a good deal if you know what your doing. The way they trick people into joining is bad, but the fees are in the fine print and if u fall for that crap have fun with your free xbox 360 from [www.xbox3604free.com]

btw, i have always received my checks from them, anyone who hasnt probably didnt follow instructions to get it

There are a lot of "parent" companies on this list (and a couple of "orphaned children" as well), obscuring names you might recognize. I'm lazy and it's late, so off the top of my head:

TigerDirect = CompUSA.com = CircuitCity.com

Cendant = so much stuff I don't know where to begin, but I think it includes at least 2 real estate brokerages, one of which is/was Century21

half.com = eBay

Choice Hotels = 10 different hotel brands

For instance:

Completesavings: I forward them one recipt per month via email and get $10 back (making membership $2), then get heavily discounted movie tickets ($5/ticket), 20% off gift cards ($80 for $100 in cards), and "points towards gift cards" (ie, I spend 10 minutes on the site per month, and get enough for a $50 visa card every 4 months or so)

Seriously though, Yahoo? They want to compete with Google and they're shysters of this caliber? GTFO Yahoo. You're starting to remind me of AOL you're getting so pathetic.

I must be smarter than the average online shopper too. OF COURSE, it says they will charge the same credit card you just used. How do you think they get the number? Miss Cleo?

I think I have had this happen once. I was charged for a membership I didn't ask for and it took me a minute to file an online dispute and have my credit card company strike the charge.

If you don't check your CC bills and spot charges for memberships and things you did not purchase, you have too much debt and/or deserve to loose $9 a month.

@HurtsSoGood: All of corporate America is eventually going to wind up on your shitlist. Then you can move to Tahiti and live in the bush, I guess.

Webloyalty/WLI*RESERVATIONREWARDS is sneaky & not obvious. I ran into them when buying a domain name from dotster.com

After purchasing a domain from Dotster they provided a link to a $15 coupon good on future Dotster purchases. To obtain the coupon I had to go to reservationrewards.com. I visited the site to get info and never signed up or gave them my credit card number. Later I noticed a $10.53 charge on my credit card from reservationrewards.com. I called RR and the #1 option on their phone system is "cancel my membership". I pressed 3 to speak to an operator who cancelled the subscription and put thru a refund with no questions asked. It must happen a lot. The operator said that by inputting my email address on their site (to get info on my coupon) I had authorized Dotster to give reservationrewards my credit card number. Very sneaky.

@Smshvll_s flng dsmvld: I got nailed at VistaPrint. I never could get them to stop the charges so I had my bank handle it for me. I got half of the money back.

I understand why ad revenues are neccessary to websites (at least non 'commercial' ones that don't actually have a product to sell), but you can't make me read them. I'm trying to think of a real world conterpart to this, and all I can come up with is making those damn perfume inserts out of kevlar so they can't be ripped out.

However, I'm a believer in whatever technology can do, technology can undo, so if that practice becomes widespread, someone will create a 'better' adblock, causeing the marketer to create a 'better ad' and so on.

Eventually we will reach a point where we'll need to update our apps and plugins every 15 seconds.

"88 websites, a good number pretty big name sites, that earned millions, some in excess of $10 million, as partners in the infamous Webloyalty consumer ripoff. Pizza Hut? Say it ain't so."

Am I missing something? I get the jist of it but it doesn't seem to make any grammatical sense. Are there missing words or something?

obviously, some VP wasn't doing his due dilligence, b/c a simple google search exposes these companies as fraudsters & shows that customers are more than willing to hold the partnership against the company that exposed them to the fraud.

all these companies are doing is siphoning money off of people - how can you not see that as an issue?

"842 people have left you messages and examined your proflie. To see them, you need to pay us for some membership."

"I don't have a profile."

But sites like Yahoo surprise me.

@subtlefrog: I love my Discover card for this reason.

They just keep going. Gevalia was writing them big fat checks to pump out the spam too.

Tiger Direct is just a scam company as well. Buy.com used to be a great company, right up there with Newegg, but the last several years it as become a freakin scam company as well.

Or you can do what I do, and Install Kaspersky Internet Security 2010. Works with all the browsers. @remington870_20ga: @morkus:

@HogwartsAlum: I will say the product is good, but it may be about the most annoying checkout process ever.

@Buckus: Tiger Direct arrived on my shitlist back when IBM compatible 386 machines were all the rage. Sears is right next to it, using cash registers that look like 386s built by Tiger Direct.

I've bought holiday gifts from Buy and not had a problem.

@TCinIowa:

Well, all the skanky hos you went to school with were already there anyway...

@oblivious87:

I am absolutely certain that the vast majority of people on this planet lack your basic reasoning skills.

Hence, the list of companies at the top of this page.

@BeyondtheTech:

Every time you use PayPal, God kills a kitten. Please, think of the kittens.

Sadly, only Discover, some low-life banks (Citi, BOA), and some foreign banks offer this. I have to trade-off between better rewards on my Visa, and more security on my Discover.

@HogwartsAlum: Eh, I just recieved my order from VistaPrint and if you don't mind clicking through the upsells, the product is a pretty great quality for the price.

But the upsells are annoying and pretty aggressive.

@BrazDane: Can we please not bring this into it?

@remington870_20ga: What sucks is that a lot of them are starting to offer online only specials...

I've only bought anything at two of those sites - Hertz and Buy.com, whom I will never Buy anything again. Buy.com has got to be one of the worst online stores, right up there with TigerDirect.

So fix the damn health care system!

Oh, sorry, wrong discussion - but the quote fit so well.

Come on guys... this is all just a conspiracy theory. You tin foil hat wearers.

Here's what I would suggest: Never call Webloyalty to get a refund. Always call your CC company and issue a fraud complaint. This will stop quickly after that. If you call Webloyalty, who quickly refund your money, it keeps them off the radar screens of all merchant processors, State AG offices, FTC, etc.

If you order online with them a page pops up after you send your order. It starts off saying that it's loading a deal for you. It then says it failed to load the main deal but to try these others instead. It's a bunch of discounts/ads for other businesses.

You'll also get e-mail about how ordering pizza can get you free MP3s.

We used to use Gevalia, but stopped after getting their spam.

My "dead to me" shitlist:
buy.com
J.C. Penney

@nucwin83: Their 'online ordering' is ten times more a pain in the ass than just calling them. That goes for other chains as well.

@morkus: I do the exact same thing because if I dont I get the phone call "I think the computer has a virus or something".

You call the 800 number from your credit card statement, and they cheerfully refund your money, probably to keep the state Attorney General from taking an interest. Plenty of people don't read their statements very carefully, and that's what Webloyalty and others like them are counting on.

Seeing this list, I'm extremely dismayed. It seems all of corporate America simply wants to screw us over.

@johnfrombrooklyn: [en.wikipedia.org]

I'm trained to ignore all pop-ups.

Good for consumerist to list all the sites that allow these parasites to prey on their customers!

And a word to these websites: we consumers will hold YOU equally accountable for these bullsh*t discount deals.

I will not patronize a web store that enables -- in fact, profits from -- this kind of abuse.

Having used VistaPrint once...this doesn't surprise me. You go through about 20 screens of upsell before it finally lets you get to your basket.

There is too much scammy crap getting onto computers through ad networks to try to pretend that ad-blocking software isn't a first line of defense at this point.

Classmates.com is associated with something sleazy? Say it isn't so!

Years ago, I signed up for this or something like it via Orbitz.com. After I completed my online car rental with them, they offered me a $20 giftcard for gasoline if I signed up with their affiliate. Signup had a free 30-day trial period and as long as you canceled before then, your card would not be charged. I read the fine print, and it seemed worthwhile. They never sent the gift card. I canceled. They billed my card anyway. I had to do a chargeback.

If anything, any company that has an agreement with WebLoyalty should be considered an accessory to this scam. How securely (if at all) are they transmitting the financial information from one website to another?

I've never hit yes to those thinbgs and I've STILL been signed up a couple of times. I've had all reversed, but where's my compensation for time and energy spent on the phone and sifting through records to prove I DIDN'T ask for the service????

What are "virtual or disposable account numbers"?