Fortunately for American consumers everywhere, the U.S. government's investigation into how several major ecommerce stores worked hand-in-hand with notorious marketers that purportedly swindled people out of a billion dollars has prompted some online retailers such as Continental Airlines to say goodbye to these modern-day con artists. However, the aforementioned marketers—Webloyalty, Vertrue, and Affinion—weren't too affected by their severed ties with well-known online stores.

In fact, the members of the promotional triumvirate of treachery are still in business and making a healthy profit from e-retailers who couldn't care less about their nefarious deeds (namely, companies such as Orbitz, Shutterfly, FTD, Classmates.com, and Priceline). For them, everything was business as usual, which could conceivably mean that the swindlers might see it fit to "connive" consumers again, since they were able to get away with it the first time.

Apparently, all the abovementioned firms define "theft", "scams", and "robbery" in a way that's far different from how members of the U.S. Senate and millions of online shoppers describe those three terms. They see nothing wrong with their duplicitous marketing practices, and they'd rather blame the consumers for overreacting than admit to any wrongdoing. After all, if they're still raking in truckloads of money from their questionable policies and have suffered miniscule to nonexistent backlash for their actions, then there's really no reason for them to change.

Even though the U.S. Senate Commerce Committee was able to show an overwhelming amount of documentation against the three marketers a week ago and appears to demonstrate that consumers are being intentionally hoodwinked into availing loyalty promotions under false pretenses, the retailers suggest, maintain, and outright rebut that it's their customers who are to blame. The controversy actually happened last May of this year, when the Commerce Committee started an investigation concerning the marketing methods of Webloyalty, Affinion, and Vertrue, which are all based in Connecticut.

Despite the damning evidence to the contrary, these three marketers could very well claim that the people complaining about their practices are the ones who've made a mistake because they've included all the terms of their dubious deals in the (carefully worded, legally binding) advertising; as such, they claim that if consumers are too preoccupied to realize that they would, say, be charged an extra monthly fee for a certain service, then shame on them for not noticing the terms and conditions earlier!