Not so "Great Fun" Scam

I was checking through my bank statement today when I noticed a charge that went through yesterday to a company I had never before heard of. This company is called TLG*GREAT FUN. The statement had a phone number attached so, naturally I called. The company informed me that I was subscribed to their services (supposedly they grant you discounts on gas, food, groceries, and other such items) which comes out at 14.99 per month and they told me that I had been enrolled for 8 months!! What bull! I blatantly told them I wanted to cancel, they didn't even try to stop me or try to get me to stay. I told them that they are 100% scammers and that I had never, in any way, shape, or form, given them my consent to sign up for their fraud service. I found nothing but complaints and scam stories of them off google and the only link to the Better Business Bureau said they had been removed! Apparently, they are a third party company that can achieve access to your credit card/bank through buying things offline at a very LARGE amount of different places. Be warned and check your bank statements daily. The thing that has really ticked me off, is that to be refunded over 4 months, you have to write or fax their executives to get your plea before their review board for a full refund. What a scam! On complaints.com, an employee even said that their company was quite deceitful in how it accessed your credit/bank info. Watch out!

So how did they get your card details? (If that's not giving too much information.)

Consider this. I ran a check on a cell phone number for like a dollar fifty to see who had been calling my girlfriend. Turns out when you do a check using "Intellus" or something like that you sign up for their protection services. It costs about 20 dollars a month. Three months later I realized I was out 60 dollars because it automatically charged me.

Doing a google searched didn't show that they were comparable to my problem but it is a possibility no one has noticed. Some type of similar online purchases could show a connection.

Just a thought.

TorchBoy said:

So how did they get your card details? (If that's not giving too much information.)

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I really do not know. :shrug:

Search said:

Consider this. I ran a check on a cell phone number for like a dollar fifty to see who had been calling my girlfriend. Turns out when you do a check using "Intellus" or something like that you sign up for their protection services. It costs about 20 dollars a month. Three months later I realized I was out 60 dollars because it automatically charged me.

Doing a google searched didn't show that they were comparable to my problem but it is a possibility no one has noticed. Some type of similar online purchases could show a connection.

Just a thought.

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Those type of companies need to be shut down. I really want to know what the law states about these fraudulent third party deals. That just doesn't seem legit to me, to be able to do that sort of thing. You know, you always hear about it from someone else...just never imagining that it could happen to you. I seriously don't know why this company hasn't been shut down. Pretty conniving I must say. Anyways, I had my bank close that account immediately and issue me a new one. I do have a letter going out to them in the morning about a full refund, but I can imagine that this is going to be a little goose chase to get it back. Thats usually what happens. You gotta write to this place. You gotta call these people now. You have to write back to those people after. Should turn out to be quite interesting. I did give them a piece of my mind when I was talking to them though.

Oh well.
You live, you learn. Ya know?

LEDobsession said:

I really do not know. :shrug:



Those type of companies need to be shut down. I really want to know what the law states about these fraudulent third party deals. That just doesn't seem legit to me, to be able to do that sort of thing. You know, you always hear about it from someone else...just never imagining that it could happen to you. I seriously don't know why this company hasn't been shut down. Pretty conniving I must say. Anyways, I had my bank close that account immediately and issue me a new one. I do have a letter going out to them in the morning about a full refund, but I can imagine that this is going to be a little goose chase to get it back. Thats usually what happens. You gotta write to this place. You gotta call these people now. You have to write back to those people after. Should turn out to be quite interesting. I did give them a piece of my mind when I was talking to them though.

Oh well.
You live, you learn. Ya know?

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Nah, I called them from the bank office and said I was irritated at how they operate and want to cancel my services. Two minutes later the lady at the bank closed that card number. Covered my rear and closed the doors.

It's a cheap way to do business. They just keep you on toes lol

Search said:

Nah, I called them from the bank office and said I was irritated at how they operate and want to cancel my services. Two minutes later the lady at the bank closed that card number. Covered my rear and closed the doors.

It's a cheap way to do business. They just keep you on toes lol

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That they do. At least I've learned from it.

Several years ago the "great fun" idiots hit my card for its monthly enrollment fee. I found it on my online statement before it got too far. After some investigation and leg work it turns out this company was given my info by the credit card company. I never got a good explanation from the card company as to why they would do that. It appeared that they are connected with the great fun guys and it was another way to rip some extra money from their customers. Needless to say I immediately cancelled all dealings with that credit card company.

gorn said:

Several years ago the "great fun" idiots hit my card for its monthly enrollment fee. I found it on my online statement before it got too far. After some investigation and leg work it turns out this company was given my info by the credit card company. I never got a good explanation from the card company as to why they would do that. It appeared that they are connected with the great fun guys and it was another way to rip some extra money from their customers. Needless to say I immediately cancelled all dealings with that credit card company.

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Did you try to get your money back? And if so, did you get any back?

Sounds like a parasite operation that hopes that the charges go unnoticed by a certain amount of people and base their business model on that. A shame that charges can be made without your consent.

I keep a low profile by using my CC minimally (e.g. pay cash at the restaurant) to avoid fraud. Now it can be your own CC company screwing you over. :shakehead

JohnR66 said:

Sounds like a parasite operation that hopes that the charges go unnoticed by a certain amount of people and base their business model on that. A shame that charges can be made without your consent.

I keep a low profile by using my CC minimally (e.g. pay cash at the restaurant) to avoid fraud. Now it can be your own CC company screwing you over. :shakehead

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Yeah. Good idea. I checked yesterday and I was pleased to see that my money had been returned. I guess that assertive letter I sent them gave them the hint. Haha.

My cc company allows me to create virtual cc numbers where I can control the months its good and the max amount it can be charged. The additional protection is that the virtual number can only be charged by one vendor. You might want to consider using this feature if you have it. If I see something fishy, I can terminate the virtual number.

That sounds like a GREAT feature, Sector7.

No kiddin! Thats awesome! Im going to look and see if my bank will do that!

When it comes to charges, credit card companies are usually on your side. If you dispute the charge they will likely credit you back and they can even block that company from making future charges.

I bought some little personal fans online once and they absolutely sucked. So I sent the company an email and tried calling them to find out how to return them. They never replied to my emails or messages. So I called my credit card company, who reversed the charges. About a month later, the company charged me again - this time for a lesser amount, about 1/4 of the original price.

I called the credit card company again and they not only reversed the charges, but put a block on that company so that they can't charge me again.

So, give your card company a call and see if you can get some of those charges back.

Sector7 said:

My cc company allows me to create virtual cc numbers where I can control the months its good and the max amount it can be charged. The additional protection is that the virtual number can only be charged by one vendor. You might want to consider using this feature if you have it. If I see something fishy, I can terminate the virtual number.

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I know that Citibank and Bank of America have virtual numbers available. An interesting feature is... once a charge is made to a specific virtual number, no other vendor can charge against it!

For example, create a virtual number and buy a book at Amazon. If another company attempts to use the same number, it is declined. On top of that, you can set time and dollar limits for each number created, so if you buy something that costs $50 total with shipping, you can create a number good for $50. If they try to charge $80, it's declined. In practice, it's a good idea to add a few bucks to the amount to allow for pre-authorization -- companies will typically do a pre-auth for $1 or $2 to verify that the number is good. The pre-authorization decreases the total amount available on the card, but no charge actually goes through.

It's a much safer way to buy online than by using your $10k, $15k, or $25k+ limit credit card number all over the web.

By the way, never use a debit card number for online purchases: the money comes straight out of your account. If an error is made -- i.e., if the vendor accidentally enters $500 into the terminal instead of $50, your account is debited $500. This may have bad consequences, especially if you only had $500 in your account and checks start bouncing.

tsmith35 said:

By the way, never use a debit card number for online purchases: the money comes straight out of your account. If an error is made -- i.e., if the vendor accidentally enters $500 into the terminal instead of $50, your account is debited $500. This may have bad consequences, especially if you only had $500 in your account and checks start bouncing.

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I can vouch for that...my wife and I had our debit card number stolen and the thief made a phony card with the number. They went on a little shopping spree at Best Buy and Nordstrom which drained that particular account. Thankfully it wasn't our main account but we were without that money for a week or so before our bank covered the losses for us and sent us new cards.