| SamaritanFundraising.com |
| SamaritanFundraising.com Scam, deceptive, false advertisement Fairfax, Virginia |
| 19th of Jun, 2011 by User115090 |
| Our mission team needed an idea to fundraise to cover our expenses for the mission trip. One of the team members suggested the Samaritan Card which is offered by SamaritanFundraising.com. The company advertised that the card can get you up to 50% discount at more than 100,000 merchants including major places like AMC, Home Depot and Office Depot (these companies are also on the back of the card thing if you see it) all around the States. Also, the website (samaritanfundraising.com) promotes EXCLUSIVE savings at these places. Moreover, it advertised that it can provide up to 70% profits! Since we needed a lot of funds, the offer from the Samaritan Fundraising looked very attractive. Also, all the credible Christian websites and trust certificates on the website gave us enough trust to order 300 Samaritan cards to raise 10% of our needed funds, depositing $300 for the cards and having the rest of costs as balance. After we got the cards, we distributed to our team members to sell them and raise funds. I also registered one to get discounts as I needed to shop some stuffs at advertised places and find about the local deals. However, as I was looking through the deals, so many deals were actually not exclusive and local deals were especially useless. I was so disappointed about how Samaritan Fundraising offers misleading comments and images compared to what the card actually offered. So, I called up the team because these cards are not sellable to people who will be supporting us with good hearts and I dont want these supporters to be turned off by the actual quality of card. So, it took me several weeks to gather almost all the cards back because our team members were scattered among many different campuses in So. Cal. After gathering almost all the cards, I returned them and emailed SamaritanFundraising, stating that I do not want to pay for the cards because the cards are falsely advertised and I want my deposit to be returned. However, they responded that they can only return up to 25% of the cards. So one of the other team members called them and told how the cards were and we want the deposit back and clear the rest of balance, however, they told that they cant and sent me a statement for $2,100. So, the return process is still going on, but these are what Samaritan Fundraising makes false claims. There are more, but I do not have enough time to do full research because I had to prepare for my departure. (I wrote the claims of SamaritanFundraising in bold, and I wrote my notes as to why these claims are misleading and the card is a scam). 15,000 participating restaurants from fast food to casual dining to fancy. As I was researching about the dining deals, these offers are not exclusive as SamaritanFundraising advertises. However, all of the deals can be actually found online from actual restaurants websites and other free coupon websites. Save up to 50% at participating affiliates including Target, Best Buy, The Limited, The Children's Place, Office Depot, Sears, Macy's Aeropostale, Overstock.com, Sports Authority, Payless, Dell, and many more. - Well at least SamaritanFundraising.com is telling the truth about "participating affiliates". At first when I saw this statement or the references to affiliates or online partners, i felt like they were talking about companies they had contracts with - but no, they mean "participating affiliates"! The entire SamaritanFundraising.com site, and other sites in which they promote or give you access, all the deals are actually just links to other websites. Also, all the local deals that I tried to look around where I live, they were all links to Valpak.com. I am not even sure whether SamartianFundraising got permission to do this. There are 61 of these types of companies in which samaritansaver.com promises you "Exclusive deals". After checking 1/2 dozen, it was obvious the deals were not "Exclusive" to the Samaritan card. You could receive the exact same deal if you went to that stores website, and searched the different departments. After you read about the Grocery Store deals you'll understand why SamaritanFundraising.com can claim 100,000 merchants, when we counted only 61 in this area. Finally I went to the entertainment section. As we already had rreservations out of state, at a well known hotel. I checked the same hotel with the Samaritan card. The Samaritan card deal would have cost me $25 more then what I had already booked with someone else. I also checked the local movie theater - WOW ! I could save a whole 25% - IF I waited for my movie to be out in the market for two weeks. Further research at alexa by another victim (a site that ranks websites, based on their traffic), revealed that none of the the Samaritan card sites had 100,000 visits, let alone 100,000 cardholders. SamaritanFundraising.com promotes the Samaritan card to charities that need to raise funds, using their desperation. Then when you try to sell and look at Samaritan card for your fundraiser, the cards are actually useless to most people and making you participate in the scam. I want to see others being ripped off and want SamaritanFundrasing out of business. |
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| You can get all nit picky all you want but if you just sit and think about it, the cards help raise money for the organizations in the long run and people will get a savings getting their money back and then some. Who cares if it's not exclusive, it encourages people to give. We wouldn't have to use these tactics if more people would just donate to their organization without always expecting to get something back in return. Instead of letting God bless them for their giving people are looking for worldly immediate satisfaction |
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| No company has the right to make a consumer pay for product, services, or things that are not satisfactory and unused. The Samaritan Card return policy is unfair to the fundraiser if they are not purchased because then the fundraiser gets stuck with the bill owing for cards that are never used. This is unfair business practice and needs to be reported on a higher level. Most of the "savings" from the cards are already savings the retail participants have advertised either on their sites or in their stores. The card simply points to savings that are already there and really offers no real additional savings. |
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