The Response

My post generated this response from WebLoyalty:

Dear Mr. McNett:

Webloyalty.com protects its reputation and monitors the blogosphere to insure information posted on our company is truthful and accurate. Through this monitoring, we found a blog entitled McNettblog.com with a posting, “The joke’s on us . . . all of us.” We have reason to believe that you are affiliated with this blog.

As you appear unhappy with our online subscription services, Reservation Rewards and Shopper Discounts & Rewards, Webloyalty.com has taken the liberty of cancelling your most recent membership in Reservation Rewards as of February 22.
For clarity, Webloyalty would like to provide you with background information on both of your memberships:

On January 25, 2007, when you completed your purchase on LillianVernon.com, you enrolled in Shoppers Discount & Rewards by clicking on a $10 cash back award, entering your email address twice and clicking “YES” on an enrollment button. We have attached the actual page that was on view the day and time that you joined. Please note that directly above the section for entering email addresses, the text advises that you are authorizing the secure transfer of your name, address and credit or debit card information to Shoppers Discount & Rewards for billing and benefit processing. You cancelled that membership on the same day.

On February 17, 2007, when you completed a separate purchase on LillianVernon.com, you enrolled in Reservation Rewards by clicking on a $10 cash back award, entering your email address twice and clicking “YES” on an enrollment button. Once again, we have attached the page on view at the day and time that you joined.

Webloyalty.com makes every effort to be straightforward with its offers, allowing consumers to make educated choices regarding the products and services they purchase. For this reason, we put the most significant details of its Shopper Discounts & Rewards and Reservation Rewards offer in a prominent location -- immediately next to the acceptance button (so that a consumer will have those details in front of him or her before joining the service). In addition, Webloyalty places those details on the very same page as the “YES!” button rather than requiring a consumer to click through one or more links in order to find these details.

Please feel free to update your blog site with this information.
Please contact me directly at or if you have suggestions for improving our service or to further discuss this matter.

Regards,
Walter Dabek
Director, Customer Service
Webloyalty.com

The jokes on us... All of us.

The below was posted on my personal site 02/16/2007

1. LillianVernon.com teams up with WebLoyalty.com to scam their customers into signing up for a worthless $10.00 per month membership.

They do this by giving your credit card information to a third party without your permission and what appears to be a conflict of their merchant bank agreements.

2. In other news... Visa and Mastercard respond to credit card fraud by creating the Payment Card Industry (PCI) Data Security Standard. A set of rules governing what steps merchants must take to protect account information.

3. In other news... ScanAlert.com was selected by Visa International to be the exclusive provider of Visa-branded PCI / AIS validation services in over 70 countries.

4. ScanAlert also provides a service to online retailers by which they "test" websites to make sure they are "Hacker Safe" and in their words: "...guard your information..." Retailers that sign up get to display the Hacker Safe logo.

5. So its a bit puzzling why ScanAlert.com allows LillianVernon.com to display the Hacker Safe logo.

I'm not making this up. LillianVernon.com gives out your credit card information knowingly to a third party without your permission which appears to be against Visa's own rules, yet the company in charge of PCI validation selected by Visa gives LillianVernon.com a thumbs up for guarding your information.