Mary Schmidt Marketing Troubleshooter

Many people are still leery about doing business on the Web, with some justification. “I don’t want to give my info to Paypal.” Yet, they give everything to Amazon and they often get sucked into all kinds of online flim-flam, such as…
From TechCrunch: The Post-Transaction Marketing Wall Of Shame: Hundreds Of Well Known Ecommerce Sites Rip Off Customers

Rockefeller is holding a U.S. Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation full committee hearing on Aggressive Sales Tactics on the Internet and their Impact on American Consumers. He released a report on his findings in advance of the hearing.

Consumers are usually offered cash back if they just hit a confirmation button. But when they do, their credit card information is automatically passed through to a marketing company that signs them up for a credit card subscription to a package of useless services. The “rebate” is rarely paid.

Intelius is one company that is using these scams to go public. But scores of even more well known ecommerce companies use these scams as well, including: 1800flowers, Buy.com, Classmates.com, Columbia House, Expedia, Hotels.com, Fandango, FTD, Hotwire, MovieTickets.com, Orbitz, Priceline, Shutterfly, Travelocity, US Airways and Vista Print.

Yet another example of “just because you can doesn’t mean you should.” (and why marketing often doesn’t get any respect…and shouldn’t in cases such as this.)

Related Posts:
My Favorite Marketing Snake Oil Pitches
Losing The Sale With One Symbol

(Thanks to Facebook friend, Jeffrey Eisenberg, for posting the original link.)