BillGuard Infographic Provides Tips to Protect Consumers From Grey Charges for Safer Online Shopping This Holiday Season

Cyber Monday 2012 Set Records; Consumers Should Be on the Lookout for Deceptive, Unwanted Charges on Their Statements


NEW YORK, NY--(Marketwire - Dec 5, 2012) - BillGuard, the leading provider of transaction monitoring and resolution services, today unveiled an infographic that sheds new light on deceptive and erroneous charges -- also referred to as "Grey Charges" -- that includes tips on how to avoid them. These charges often are the result of companies that are banking on the fact that people don't read the fine print or verify their transactions as carefully as they should.

With Cyber Monday resulting in a 30 percent spike in online sales, it's more important than ever for consumers to know what to look out for when it comes to deceptive billing practices. As holiday spending ramps up, more customers should stay alert for the most common types of Grey Charges. These include unwanted auto-renewals, free trials that morph into paid memberships, and monthly fees that slowly creep up. Many customers also fall prey to "zombie" subscriptions: subscriptions that won't go away even after the customer tries to cancel.

According to BillGuard's internal research one in four users has incurred some type of erroneous or deceptive charge in the last twelve months. And among those users who have been affected, the average of these charges is about $350 a year.

Grey Charges are potentially more costly to the industry than fraudulent ones because they impact every consumer, often go undetected and in many cases are not regulated. The BillGuard service automates the detection process and analyzes millions of consumer billing disputes to alert debit and credit card holders to potentially deceptive, erroneous and unauthorized charges. The service also facilitates direct-to-merchant online resolution, to help consumers resolve their billing disputes and expeditiously receive a refund when warranted.

BillGuard recently expanded its proven big data and crowdsourcing technologies to protect consumers against Grey Charges via mobile payments with BillGuard for Passbook and its integration with Lemon® Wallet.

"We hope that greater awareness about Grey Charges will reduce the severity of the problem across the nation. Our mission is to protect each and every consumer from these types of charges and this useful tool will further help us achieve this goal," said Yaron Samid, co-founder and CEO of BillGuard. "BillGuard is excited to share these valuable, and cost-saving, findings with our passionate community and consumers nationwide."

To sign up for the free BillGuard service, please visit www.billguard.com. To view BillGuard's Grey Charges infographic, click here or read our latest blog post here.

About BillGuard:
BillGuard Inc. is the leading provider of transaction monitoring and resolution services for consumers, merchants and the financial services community. Through its patent-pending crowdsourced transaction analytics engine, BillGuard addresses unique personal finance security challenges in the digital marketplace, ensuring trusted commerce everywhere, on every device. BillGuard analyzes millions of consumer billing disputes to alert debit and credit card holders to deceptive, erroneous and unauthorized charges and facilitates direct-to-merchant online resolution. In 2012 the company was inducted into the Online Banking Report Hall of Fame as one of the top online banking innovations of all time. BillGuard is headquartered in New York and is backed by the world's top investors, including Bessemer Venture Partners, Khosla Ventures, Founders Fund, Innovation Endeavors, and IA Ventures.