VistaPrint, the online business card service, appears to be running a very dubious sideline in automatically subscribing people - against their wishes - to a discount service known as VPrewards.

It would seem that many people, including myself, have unwittingly been enrolled in a discount club called VPrewards and costing £9.95 per month. What appears to be happening is that when you order business cards or the like on Vistaprint.co.uk you are then charged £9.95 in subsequent months for a rewards scheme (discounts with name brands) that they say you opted into. This occurs after your initial order has been paid in full and you only notice it if you look closely at your subsequent credit card bill.

Like many aggreived customers I have absoloutely no recollection of seeing wording or clicking anything that represented an agreement to join the scheme. Like most people I am very vigilant on any e-commerce site I use. So either VistaPrint were very sneaky and got it past my eagle eyes, or they are simply making it up. Whatever the case they can supply no documentation to prove that I requested to be a subscriber.

The firm simply says it has my IP address to prove it: “You filled out an online questionnaire,” said Dinah Manner, customer service rep for VPRewards, the UK company which I was redirected to through my credit card company.

The company agreed to unsubscribe me but said it saw no reason to do anything to prevent it happening to others.

Instead VPrewards denies that this is a common complaint and to rub salt into the wound they say that refunds are only granted through the US office, unless you accept a ‘cheque in the post’, meaning you still have to pay the fee on your credit card.

Intriguingly www.vprewards.co.uk is not an active domain. It is owned by Adaptive Affinity Ltd, the Edgeware-based company calling itself VPRewards. The company communicates via an email address ‘membersavings@vpreward.co.uk’ but the email contains no company name or contact details. www.vprewards.com (which is active as the VPrewards web site) is owned by Nebraska-based US firm Adaptive Marketing.

But VistaPrint supplies no details about VPrewards on its own site and nothing beyond a home page is given on the VPrewards web site.

Some victims of this only notice the problem after months of being charged. It is made particularly hard to detect as no information relating to it is provided in writing or on the invoice for your original order. One victim writing on the web suggests the only way to clear the matter up for good is to cancel your credit card and sign up for a new one.

VPrewards.co.uk declined to be interviewed to discuss the matter further. I have emailed the Vistaprint PR team who also refuse to talk on the phone but instead have sent my complaint on to a customer service representative who did contact me by phone while i was out.

Meanwhile there are lots of similar complaints on internet forums, so it could be that hundreds if not thousands are affected. If you or anyone you know has been affected please phone the rant line (above) as I am passing this story on to BBC Watchdog and to the nationals.

What is most shocking is that there appear to be hundreds of customers who have experienced this rip-off. If you type in ‘vistaprint scam’ into Google you can see them for yourself. When I asked the UK operation to comment on this they said they were only aware of many happy customers on the VPRewards scheme.

The other fact about this case is that you are agreeing to buy from VistaPrint yet you end up also subscribing to something called VPrewards run by Adaptive Affinity Ltd., which may or may not be run by Affinity Marketing of Nebraska.

The fact is it takes many hours/days to sort this all out. It would seem totally reasonable to charge VistaPrint for the time out of your working day that is spent putting matters right. Perhaps some kind of class action would be appropriate in that respect. I am so concerned about this matter that I have opened another web site to detail the matter in depth.

What to do next? Please comment below to help others and then join the campaign group to ensure we bring this matter to the attention of Trading Standards, The Fraud Office, and the media….. please phone the number above and leave your name and a contact telephone number. Once there are more than half a dozen people that want to get involved I will be organising a meeting in central London to see what what can do. We must stop this scam - if only to save others from being caught in the trap.