In this file photo US President Donald Trump smiles during the first presidential debate at Case Western Reserve University and Cleveland Clinic in Cleveland, Ohio, on September 29, 2020
New York: According to The New York Times report on Saturday, Former US President Donald Trump used deceptive strategies such as pre-ticked boxes in fundraising e-mails in his fundraising campaign to trick supporters into donating millions of dollars that they never intended. Following people's complaints that more money was deducted than they had made payments for, about 11 per cent of the money raised, amounting to 112.7 million dollars, was refunded by Trump's re-election campaign in 2020.
WinRed, the company that processed the online donations of the Trump campaign, used computer interfaces that tricked people into repeating monthly and weekly donations by pre-checking boxes for these options, which are then buried under paragraphs of bold text so that unless the donors manually untick these pre-checked boxes, they are forced to pay more than they intended until Election Day. While a Kansas supporter got tapped for $3000 one month when they planned to donate $500, another supporter's $900 donation became $8000.
Trump spokesperson Jason Miller told NYT that internal data determined 8.87 per cent of its WinRed transactions were subject to "formal" credit card disputes.
"The fact we had a dispute rate of less than 1 per cent of total donations despite raising more grass-roots money than any campaign in history is remarkable," Miller said.