Free Month Subscription or Fool Me Once Shame on You

by bigcajunman on October 11, 2012

I wrote a long while ago about how the Motley Fool (not I do not link to them) once tricked me into 2 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 2 months was over, I sent an e-mail saying, “Yeh, nice stuff, but please cancel“.

Evidently the e-mail didn’t get processed and my next credit card bill hard 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 lots of folks keep 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 was asking for billing information, since they assumed I would love this service and want it to continue.

Not as Free as you Think

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 just 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).

Anyone out there with similar stories of flim-flammery or shenanigans ?

{ 4 comments }

{ 4 comments… add one }

Denis October 14, 2012 at 10:08 pm edit
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.

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Mary October 13, 2012 at 8:33 am edit
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.

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Geoff October 12, 2012 at 9:39 am edit
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.

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Michael James October 11, 2012 at 8:29 am edit
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.

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