The OCU (Organization of American States) denounces a company that "deceptively" recruits subscribers.

BarcelonaIn just six months, the Organization of Consumers and Users (OCU) claims to have registered up to 277 complaints against the company Privilegios en Compras, through its Reclamar platform, subsidized by the European Union (EU) through the Ciclo X Project. The objective of this platform is to communicate their customers' complaints to companies and also to detect problems.

One of the most recent cases affects hundreds of consumers who claim to have been charged an eighteen-euro monthly subscription fee for the Privilegios en Compras refund service without remembering having given their consent. They realize they have subscribed when they begin to see monthly charges on their credit card from entities identified as Cash.Privcompras or wly*privicompras.es and they wonder what this company does and how it obtained their data. This is a practice of attracting subscribers in a "deceptive" way.

To offer its services, Shopping Privileges agrees with other online retail sites to show their customers an advertisement that appears to be a message from the store offering the customer a refund upon completing the purchase of a product or service.

Unconscious subscription

The consumer believes they are still interacting with the store where they just made their purchase and, without looking at the fine print, accepts the refund, only to find out they are subscribing to Shopping Privileges. Since the consumer subscribes to the service unwittingly, they don't even do so, and "this means net income for the company Shopping Privileges, which collects the fees until the affected party realizes what is happening," according to the OCU (Spanish Consumer Protection Agency). Shopping Privileges or Privicompras is the trade name of Webloyalty International, a company with headquarters in Switzerland. Its business consists of offering consumers refunds when they make online purchases.

The reported practice is always the same: the company charges eighteen euros per month for shopping refund services that most of its customers subscribe to without realizing it when they shop at well-known websites such as PC Componentes, Alsa, Telepizza, or Carrefour. OCU has received numerous complaints about this, so it has reported Privilegios en Compras to the Ministry of Consumer Affairs "for its deceptive recruitment strategies" and is asking companies to collaborate and review their agreements.