A CHOICE investigation has found the ‘Senior Advantage’ membership program charges customers to access “discounts” that are already publicly available to everyone. CHOICE is warning customers to watch out for this and similar online tricks that are heavily marketed online.
“CHOICE is issuing a warning today about Senior Advantage. As part of our investigation we signed up to this service and found that the company made big claims but delivered no unique value.”
“When we tried to claim deals from Senior Advantage we were taken directly to publicly available deals like the half price specials pages for major supermarkets,” says CHOICE Investigator Andy Kollmorgen.
Read the full investigation at CHOICE.com.au/SeniorAdvantage – We’d love a link back if possible.
Senior Advantage promises “member-only access to thousands of ways to save at popular stores, restaurants and service providers” but CHOICE found a number of offerings under the “membership” were publicly available for free.
“Senior Advantage appears to be a lazy cash grab, essentially re-badging discounts already available for free. They take advantage of senior Australians with big promises, drip pricing and lazy, cheap content of little value,” says Kollmorgen.
CHOICE’s investigation also found:
– A CEO that potentially doesn’t exist (a reverse image search uncovered that the image used for the CEO was a stock photo)
– Checkout pages that engage in drip and trick pricing – advertising one price initially but defaulting to other, more lucrative prices for the business
– Low quality content on dieting and budgeting, largely available for free from more authoritative sources
– Dubious reviews of the service, likely to be fake
– The company appears to be based in Lithuania and may attempt to funnel disputes through the Lithuanian legal system, in contravention of the Australian Consumer Law
The investigation was sparked by tip-offs from seniors’ groups and conducted with the assistance of the CHOICE community.
CHOICE’s advice is for senior Australians to demand their money back from Senior Advantage.
“A number of members of the CHOICE community have received refunds from Senior Advantage,” says Kollmorgen.
