So the other day I was getting lunch from my favourite noodle establishment in the Adelaide CBD and noticed they had one of those paper entry Home Lottery rewards things, and I figured stuff it, I'd enter. That was a week or two ago. Today I received a call from the lottery confirming my entry and telling me that I had won a minor prize, which is the "Aussie Loan Saver Pack" valued at $195: https://www.myrewardsaust.com.au/aussie-loan-saver/
He told me that this product is basically a way to check if my bank has been over charging me and give me a refund in the event that I had been paying too much on my mortgage (I marked that I was a home owner on the lottery form, as it requested it). He banged on about some article that got posted to news.com.au about how banks are over charging people etc. etc., but what really set my bullshit detector off is the fact that part of this product is that a USB gets mailed to you with the software on it. Now I dunno what kind of operation they're running but if it can't be done with a webform in 2022, that automatically sets off alarm bells in my mind. I probed him on it a bit, and he stated that it does not request account or personal details, you simply input the info from your statements about what you pay/what you owe and your interest rate(s) and it will calculate if the bank over charged you. He said it wouldn't even need to be plugged into your own computer. Now, working in a software company, I understand that something like that could be created by a first year computer science major in Microsoft Excel 2003, so why does it cost $195 and why does it need to come on a USB? Even if it isn't to inject malware, it's a bit odd that they wouldn't just put this on a website and hide it behind a paywall.
He advised that they send someone out to you and they deliver this USB and explain everything, then if you find you're being overcharged (I asked if anyone ever got under charged and he said he only ever saw it once) but by this point he had kinda lost me. I told him that I was suspicious of the fact that they need a USB to do this and he reassured me by saying that the person who would come visit me would "wear a uniform" and this was supposed to make me "feel more comfortable". Very weird. I kept asking if I could call back and he was a bit deflective, but eventually conceded and gave me a number to call back on after I had done some research.
I was able to find a couple reddit posts, and the product review page (https://www.productreview.com.au/listings/my-rewards-austral…), and people seem to share my suspicions, but nobody has outright stated that they got ripped off, one guy on reddit even said that his grandmother received $19,000 back from this!
If its legit I'm all for it, as I could use the money, but right now its got my guard up. Anyone got any experience with this company?
I just found this as well: https://www.reverseaustralia.com/lookup/0480049157/
I guess it could just be a ploy to capture data, which doesn't really phase me as everything today is a ploy to capture data.