Credit Cards

It’s whats known as “Data Pass”. You went up to Orbitz, Buy.com, Fandango, Shutterfly, Priceline or Continental Airlines and purchase something. You are then asked if you want to be a part of the loyalty program. If you say yes, the credit card would be passed to a 3rd party affiliate, like WebLoyalty, Vertue and Affinion. They would then continue to bill your card. This issue broke lose in 2009 and the US Senate commerce Committee started looking into the issue.

On Aug 10, 2010, Affinion (parent company to Data Pass) agreed to pay 8 million in damages. An additional $2 million would be paid between 5 – 3rd party companies that included Classmates.com and FTD. A small amount to the millions they swindled for years…

Full Day in Tech History podcast show notes for July 24

• Caldera International buys DR-DOS from Novell
• AMD acquires ATI Technologies
• Podcaster Leo Laporte walks over to record the first show from their new TWIT Brickhouse.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download | Embed

Tagged as: Affinion Group, aggregator, AMD, ATI, business, buy.com, caldera, classmates, continental airlines, Credit card, credit card issues, day in tech history, DOS, dr-dos, fandango, Financial Services, ftd, Geek, loyalty program, novell, orbitz, Podcast, priceline, senate commerce committee, shutterfly, stitcher, technology history, us senate, vertue, webloyalty

Article by Jeffrey Powers @geekazine

Jeffrey has written 375 awesome articles for us at Day in Tech History