The Scam Your Bank Won't Help You With
Last year Kiwibank announced its strongest financial year ever, raking in $131 million in profits. But that doesn't mean they'll help you.
Hi,
Last month I got a very honest and very distressed email from Paul.
“I’m one of those stupid people that never checks his bank or credit card statements, even though for well over a year now I have kept thinking, why am I paying so much onto my credit card and yet it is not paying it off in full, as it should be?”
Paul — an older guy who’s had his fair share of bad luck lately — had logged into his online banking, where he saw a pending payment for $74.95. He didn’t recognise it, so called his bank, Kiwibank, in a panic. It turns out this automatic payment had been coming out of his account on the 17th of every month for 17 months.
So far he’d sent $1274.15 American dollars somewhere for something. He just had no idea what. It totalled about $2000 when converted to New Zealand dollars. For Paul, who has very little money and some fairly major health issues — it was a big blow.
Last year Kiwibank announced its strongest financial year ever, raking in $131 million in profits.
Kiwibank was incredibly difficult to get hold of.
After “about five hours over three days trying to get through, each day giving up and leaving a message to be called back” Paul got through. And when he did get through to their “Charge Back Team”, they told him he’d have to track the payment down himself, and ask for the money back.
“The stress is really affecting me,” he said bluntly in his email. I wasn’t surprised. Paul had found the company name from previous payments: Bubbaplayz.com, and he couldn’t see any way to contact them.
But he did recognise the name, and his heart sank.
“It turns out it’s a “free” online casino site I looked at briefly over lockdown over two years ago, but forgot about and never looked at again.”
I decided to find out what Bubbaplayz was.
First up, I called their customer support (an American number), and after a lot of ringing and what sounded like re-routed connections, I ended up in a call centre. The person I got spoke in a thick European accent and, like me, struggled to understand what Bubbaplayz was also.
She told me she took calls about a number of websites, but seemed mystified by this particular one. I think the language barrier was half the problem, both of us struggling to understand each other. I had to keep enunciating “Bubbaplayz” more than I ever wanted to.
With zero success, I hung up.
I turned to their website’s FAQ, which didn’t exactly bode well: one of the top listed questions being “Is bubbaplayz.com a legal site?” Not a question you tend to find on legitimate sites.
The other FAQs start to paint a picture that what happened to Paul isn’t unique to him:
How does a trial membership work?
Trial memberships upgrade automatically to the standard monthly membership plan unless you cancel within the trial period.
I look around for the standard monthly membership. It’s $49.95 US. But Paul was being charged $74.95. Turns out helpful Bubbaplayz had bumped him up to a “Premium Subscription”.
Lucky Paul.
And of course the site was banking on him not noticing his free account was going to be bumped up to the “Premium Subscription” after a grand total of five days.
Paul missed seeing the $74.95 charge on day five — and his fate was sealed.
Do you have a refund policy?
One month premium members may cancel their subscription at any time during the initial thirty day period following registration and receive a 100% refund of their respective membership price. No refunds will be issued after the first thirty days of Service.
Now Bubbaplayz is allegedly a subscription gaming platform that costs $74.95 per month — which is absolutely bonkers when you consider legitimate services like Microsoft’s GamePass cost $12.95 per month. Nintendo Online is $6.55 a month.
I called in super nerd Dylan Reeve to do some poking. Now despite having an American number and quoting everything in US dollars, the website is British.
And while Zodiac Five Consulting Limited is a real registered company, Dylan tells me, “I’m skeptical about its named directors, and the address of the company and apparently the directors seems like it might not be a real address.”
He went on.
“The company was established in 2019 by a man, Scott Goldfinch, who should have been in prison at the time.”
“The company’s financial statement is entirely incongruous with a business supposedly providing the service that it does, and changing its users what it does,” says Dylan. “It’s a paper company, I highly doubt it actually provides the service it claims in any meaningful way. It’s a scam and Paul's bank should help him.”
Paul’s bank, Kiwibank, did not help him.
Instead it instructed him to get in contact with the alleged scammers.
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I got Paul an email for Bubbaplayz, and Paul emailed them.
A few days later — Paul got a reply. Like the call centre, “info@bubbaplayz.com” also appeared confused about what it did, writing:
“Dear Paul,
Thank you for reaching out to us. We are a subscription website for either movies, music, e-books, games or health.”
They also added a “Please be informed as well that we are 100% legit.”
Then a surprise: Possibly because they knew Paul had initiated a “charge back” complaint via Kiwibank, they refunded six months of bills: $449.70.
That left Paul $824.45 US out of pocket. For him, that was $1,287.98 kiwi dollars.
He got back in contact with Kiwibank, who told him they would not be getting his $1,287.98 back.
I got in touch with Kiwibank to hear their stance.
Like Paul, I find them quite hard to contact. Their media number goes unanswered for about a week, apparently due to some kind of comms changeover. Eventually I get an email address and lay out what I’ve found about Paul, and Bubbaplayz.
Their response starts positively — “It is particularly awful to see vulnerable members of our community, such as our elderly customers getting taken advantage of” — before going where you sort of expect it to go:
“Websites like BUBBAPLAYZ are unfortunately very common, and when they are brought to Kiwibank’s attention we will investigate the website and can place a merchant block if we deem it to be unsafe and / or a scam. That is what we have done in this case.”
After using the words “unsafe” and “scam”, they ramble on about their customer protection team and the fact each case is “case by case”, before landing the clincher:
“It is harder to retrieve money from a merchant when a customer knowingly signs up to a subscription service. In cases where we see vulnerable consumers being taken advantage of, Kiwibank will support our customers through a number of ways.”
I want to yell.
Yes, the customer knowingly signed up to the “subscription service.” Not only has Bubbaplayz banked on this, but so has the bank. Because it means the bank doesn’t have to cough up.
The thing is — the service isn’t what the customer thought he was signing up for. And the cost certainly wasn’t. No sane person would pay $74.95 a month for what Bubbaplayz is offering.
It’s why their website contains a FAQ that says “Is this legal?” — because a load of scammed people are clearly experiencing the same shit.
It’s a loophole they rely on.
And they’re so, so common. Dylan just came across another site, a giveaway scam that leverages YouTuber Mr Beast’s brand.
“Following the ‘claim prize’ link takes to you their ‘sponsor’ — a scam ebook provider which asks you to create a ‘free’ account verified with a credit card. After a few days it’ll start billing a exorbitant monthly fee for the bullshit service.
These scams are so blatantly fraudulent, yet banks often refuse to refund them as they claim customers have signed up for a service.
This one is allegedly about ebooks. The price is impossible to find. But deep in the terms it can be discovered to be $75 per month.”
So I guess this newsletter serves as a kind of depressing warning.
It’s a scam a bank like Kiwibank apparently won’t help you with. They are aware they are happening, but will not do anything to help you after the fact — besides making you contact the scammer (in this case, a pedophile*) yourself.
Last year Kiwibank announced its strongest financial year ever, raking in $131 million in profits.
Paul lost just over $1000.
David.
PS: I have told Paul I will cover the $1,287.98. I can right now, and so I will. Not saying this to be a “oh look at me, I’m so great” — I just think that it’s kinda shitty to call something out while not helping in some way yourself.
*In my original email to Kiwibank, told them all the background we’d found, so they had context to his particular scam:
So yeah, they had all this information when they made their decision about Paul’s case.
Reading how Kiwibank has handled this is wild to me. I work in banking and dispute the same kind of charges every week, they have to know what a complete wild goose chase they sent this poor man on. There are thousands of these scummy subscription sites, and for every one that gets taken down more pop up in their place.
It’s really worrying to me that Kiwibank has dedicated chargeback teams that don’t know this and would tell a customer to reach out to these scam companies. They should be able to identify what’s happened here. Instead they’re passing the buck and wasting the already limited time they have to dispute this.
Just signed up for webworm last night! And thinking that any amount I paid is going to good causes like helping Paul fills my heart with immense joy. 🥰 Thanks for making the world a bit better David.