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Vertrue


Vertrue Incorporated, headquartered in Norwalk, CT, is a consumer services marketing company. The company again received an "F" from the Better Business Bureau for making unauthorized charges to its customers' credit cards. In 2007 it was acquired by a trio of investment firms, including Rho Ventures. In 2010, Vertrue and two of its subsidiaries were found guilty of defrauding nearly 500,000 of their customers in Iowa.

In the annual report, submitted to the United States Securities and Exchange Commission, in November 2006 the President and Chief Executive Officer of Vertrue is listed as Gary Johnson.

Vertrue have a European division called Adaptive Affinity, based in Edgware UK, and led by Andrew Millet. They have a number of brands in Europe including VP Rewards, Premier Club and highstreetmax.com. In America, one of their brands is MVQ SavingsAce. All of the brands specialise in positive option selling, where customers of other companies, for example Amazon.co.uk or Lastminute.com find that by not un-clicking a box during a transaction they will be signed up and billed for the memberships which is stated in the terms and conditions. The branch agreed to change its sign-up methods in June 2009. Adaptive Affinity Ltd began a process of attempting to force the removal of negative comments from their customers, by posting legal letters to a number of websites in September 2010.

Vertrue faced a class action lawsuit at the Middle District Court of Tennessee in which Margaret Wike claimed that Vertrue violated federal law by enrolling her in a discount club and charging a monthly fee to her debit card. The district court granted summary judgment for Vertrue, concluding that EFTA’s one-year limitations period barred Wike’s claim. Wike sought leave to add RICO claims to her complaint, alleging that Vertrue had ensnared Wike and “hundreds of thousands” of other consumers in a deceptive marketing scheme. The district court denied Wike’s request, concluding that the proposed amendment would be futile because Wike could not show she was injured “by reason of” Vertrue’s alleged racketeering activity, 18 U.S.C. § 1964. Wike appealed both rulings and prevailed on the summary judgment ruling but the appeals court decided not to rule on the failure to provide leave to amend complaint to include racketeering charges.


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