A number of people buy business cards and other printed materials from Vista Printing (also known as Vistaprint.com). While we're going to badmouth our competition or tell you how to do your business, this news article might be enough to give you a reason to want to deal with a human instead of the faceless monolith known as the internet. The following article is printed verbatim from the Advertising Specialty Institute website:
VistaPrint Named in Four Federal Class-Action Lawsuits (8/28/2008)
Four class-action lawsuits have been brought against VistaPrint, a small business marketing company with over 15 million customers worldwide, regarding unauthorized charges of the credit cards and bank accounts of customers who purchased items on the company's U.S. Web site. VistaPrint Limited and its U.S. subsidiary, along with Vertrue Inc. and its subsidiary Adaptive Marketing LLC, were named as defendants in all four cases. VistaPrint revealed on Thursday in a press release that pending cases were filed in New Jersey and Texas, but Counselor has learned that additional class-action suits were filed yesterday in both Massachusetts and Alabama.
"As we allege in the complaint, we believe that VistaPrint and Vertrue are acting in concert to access consumers' credit card information and then begin charging them relatively small amounts," says Jerome Noll, counsel for the plaintiff that filed the Massachusetts suit. "You're talking about $14.95 a month or $12.95 a month, hoping that consumers just won't notice."
Dolores Gordon, the plaintiff in the Massachusetts case, claims that there were six unauthorized charges on her credit card of $14.95 each after she purchased business cards from VistaPrint on Sept. 1, 2007. One unauthorized charge was allegedly from VistaPrint and five were from Shopping Essentials, a trademark of Adaptive Marketing. Gordon says she canceled her card to stop the charges. "She had contacted the defendants many times over the six months asking them for credit and for them to stop charging her," says Noll, whose firm has also filed a lawsuit in Connecticut against Vertrue. "They would tell her, 'Yes, of course, we'll give you the credit, of course we'll stop charging you.' They never did."
The complaints, all filed in federal courts, allege that the defendants were in violation of the Electronic Funds Transfer Act (which protects from unauthorized charges) and the federal Electronic Communications and Privacy Act (which prohibits the unlawful access of financial information). VistaPrint could not comment due to pending litigation. Its press release states, "VistaPrint believes it has meritorious defenses to these lawsuits and intends to defend these matters vigorously."
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