What Is a TLG Buyer Charge? How to Cancel, Refund, and Dispute

A TLG buyer charge on your credit card, debit card, or bank statement is a recurring membership fee from Trilegiant Corporation, a subsidiary of Affinion Group that runs discount and monitoring clubs under names like Buyers Advantage, Great Fun, Shoppers Advantage, and Privacy Guard. The charges usually run between $6.95 and $19.99 a month and can pile up for a long time before anyone notices, because most people who see them don’t remember signing up.¹²

The good news: you can cancel the membership, and federal law gives you a defined path to dispute charges you didn’t authorize. The catch is timing. Both the credit card and bank account dispute rules run on 60-day clocks, so the sooner you act, the more you can recover.

What the Descriptor on Your Statement Means

The “TLG” prefix stands for Trilegiant. The word after the asterisk tells you which specific program is billing you. Common ones consumers report seeing:

TLG*BUYER — Buyers Advantage (home repair and product warranty services)
TLG*GREATFN — Great Fun (entertainment and shopping discounts)
TLG*SHOPPER — Shoppers Advantage (retail discounts)
TLG*PRIVGRD — Privacy Guard (credit monitoring)
TLG*EVRYDAY — an everyday values discount club

Other program names in the same family include Travelers Advantage, Credit Alert, AutoVantage, CompleteHome, and HealthSaver.¹²³

How You Probably Got Enrolled

You aren’t imagining that you never signed up in the ordinary sense. Trilegiant and Affinion used two enrollment tactics that federal and state regulators later called deceptive.

One was the “data pass.” After you finished a purchase on a site like Priceline, Fandango, or Orbitz, the confirmation page showed what looked like a bonus, such as “$10 off your next purchase.” Clicking it handed your card information from the retailer to Affinion. You didn’t retype anything, and that single click enrolled you in a monthly club.⁴

The other was the “live check.” Trilegiant mailed small checks for $2 to $10, often tucked into Chase Bank statements and carrying Chase’s logo. Cashing what looked like a rebate meant, per the fine print, agreeing to enroll. Monthly charges started showing up afterward.⁵

Both methods used “negative option” billing: a short trial converted automatically to a paid membership unless you called to cancel. Many people never realized they had enrolled at all.¹

How to Cancel the Membership

Stop the bleeding first. Cancel the membership so no new charges post, then work on getting past charges back.

For Buyers Advantage, you can cancel by:

Phone: 1-877-824-0850
Email: service@buyersadvantage.com
Mail: Buyers Advantage, P.O. Box 41220, Nashville, TN 37204
The cancellation link on the program’s website

Cite the exact descriptor from your statement and the card the charges hit.³ For Great Fun, consumers have reached the company at 800-285-5903. If you’re being billed under a different TLG program, look up that specific program’s contact number rather than assuming one line handles them all.

Ask for a Refund on the Call, and Know What Their Playbook Looked Like

A Senate investigation found that call center agents were trained to offer cancellation without a refund first. Full refunds were often withheld unless the caller mentioned words like “attorney general,” “Better Business Bureau,” or “bank representative.” Refunds beyond two months of charges frequently required a written affidavit, and internal data showed fewer than half of those affidavits were ever returned.⁴ Ask for a full refund of every charge, not just the most recent one. If you’re told you can only get two months back, say you’ll be disputing the rest with your card issuer or bank and filing complaints with the CFPB and your state attorney general.

Disputing Past Charges on a Credit Card

If the company won’t refund you, or the charges were never authorized in the first place, dispute them with your card issuer under the Fair Credit Billing Act. The law caps your liability for unauthorized charges at $50.

Send a written dispute letter to the issuer’s billing inquiry address (not the payment address) within 60 days of the first statement that showed the error. Include your name, account number, and a description of each disputed charge, with copies of anything that backs you up. Certified mail creates a record. The issuer has to acknowledge the dispute within 30 days and resolve it within 90 days. You can withhold payment on the disputed amount while it’s being investigated, and the issuer can’t report you delinquent on it.⁶

A practical note: even though 60 days is the statutory window from the first billed error, most issuers will process a dispute for recent months regardless. Call the number on the back of your card first and ask what they’ll accept.

Disputing Past Charges on a Debit Card or Bank Account

TLG charges often hit debit cards and checking accounts, and those follow a different law: the Electronic Fund Transfer Act and Regulation E. The deadlines and liability tiers here are stricter than credit card rules, so speed matters more.

Report within two business days of learning about the unauthorized charge: your liability is capped at $50.
Report between two and 60 days after the statement was sent: liability cap rises to $500.
Miss the 60-day window from when the statement was sent: you can face unlimited liability for later unauthorized charges.⁷

A few things your bank cannot do: it can’t require you to contact the merchant before it opens an investigation, it can’t demand a police report to start looking into the claim, and it can’t deny the claim by pointing to your own negligence.⁷ If a bank employee tries any of those, escalate to a supervisor or file a CFPB complaint.

Where to File a Complaint If They Won’t Refund

If cancellation went through but the company refuses a full refund, complaints put real pressure on them:

Consumer Financial Protection Bureau at consumerfinance.gov/complaint or 855-411-2372. The CFPB forwards your complaint to the company, which typically responds within 15 days.⁸
Federal Trade Commission at ReportFraud.ftc.gov.⁹
Your state attorney general’s consumer protection division. Multi-state action has historically been the most effective route to industry-wide refunds on these programs.

Why New TLG Charges Are Less Common Now

The data pass and live check tactics that fed most enrollments are now prohibited. The Restore Online Shoppers’ Confidence Act, passed in December 2010, made it illegal for a merchant to share your card information with a post-transaction third-party seller for online sales, and required those sellers to get your express informed consent, including making you type in your full account number.¹⁰ A 47-state settlement in 2013 with Affinion, Trilegiant, and Webloyalty banned live check solicitations and data pass enrollment outright and required clearer disclosures.¹¹

Old memberships can still be quietly billing, though. If you spot a TLG descriptor on a current statement, treat it as active until you’ve called to cancel and either gotten a refund from the company or disputed the charges through your card issuer or bank. The 60-day dispute windows apply from your statement date, not from when you first enrolled, so a lingering charge from years ago can still be disputable when a fresh one posts.

1
Cleveland 19 News. Consumer Alert: Class Action Lawsuit Against Trilegiant Corporation
2
Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. CFPB Complaint: Affinion Group
3
Buyers Advantage. Buyers Advantage Terms and Conditions
4
U.S. Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation. Supplemental Staff Report on Aggressive Online Sales Tactics
5
Washington State Attorney General. McKenna Announces Multi-State Settlement With Chase Bank and Trilegiant
6
Federal Trade Commission. Using Credit Cards and Disputing Charges
7
Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. Electronic Fund Transfers FAQs
8
Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. Submit a Complaint
9
Federal Trade Commission. How to Stop Subscriptions You Never Ordered
10
U.S. Congress. Restore Online Shoppers’ Confidence Act (Public Law 111-345)
11
Washington State Attorney General. Ferguson Announces $30M Judgment Against Company That Runs Discount Club Programs