I wrote a long while ago about how the Motley Fool got me into two months free on one of their thousands of newsletters. When I signed up, I foolishly (pardon the pun) gave them my credit card number, and when the two months were over, I sent an e-mail saying, “Yeah, nice stuff, but please cancel.”
The e-mail didn’t get processed, and my next credit card bill had a charge of almost $200 US on it (what financial info is worth that much, aside from winning lottery numbers?), and I had to fight to get the charge reversed.
From that day forward, I swore I would never sign up for any more “free” things if they asked for a credit card, but sure enough, many folks kept trying to get my credit card info.
Yesterday, I got a message from LinkedIn, which seems to be trying to be the Facebook of Job Finding, and they offered me a free month of their premium service. I pressed the button to see where it might lead, and sure enough, the second page asked for billing information since they assumed I would love this service and want it to continue.
Fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice, shame on me! No, they didn’t get my credit card number, and I guess I should stop pressing the buttons on these alleged free offers.
Coincidentally, I am announcing a new premium service for subscribers to my newsletter who send me money, where I will promise to swear more and make much nastier commentaries about various financial firms (void where prohibited by law and not ever going to happen, so keep your money).
Is anyone out there with similar stories of flimflammery or shenanigans?
Infomercial from years ago about buying houses for no money. Once I returned the material, they hit my credit card again, got the charge reversed after a lot of fighting, and again they hit me for $0.02 again a while later. I got that reversed after threatening to hit them with my lawyer. Kind of amusing seeing as I don’t have a lawyer.I know one but she is not the “in the court fighting type” lawyer.
I eventually started checking the internet and found that they did that with lots of people and would hit you again hoping you might not notice. Turned out the product was mostly not usable in Canada, but they were not going to tell you that.
I had a similar experience but it was from an informercial my husband ordered…he didn’t realize it signed us up for monthly shipments and we like to never got that thing cancelled…I forget how many months it continued with us calling every month and finally threatening to report them. Sad thing is, they just don’t care.
I had a good experience with yousendit recently, who did the same thing but you can login, cancel your account and the charge never went through. It works sometimes, I guess.
It’s the same deal with many gyms. You sign up for a free month of workouts but have to give them your bank account number. When you try to cancel, they just keep taking your money for a long time.