I recently decided to look into grants for women-owned businesses, so I looked online for legitimate companies that could help me track down grants. That was my first mistake... I found a company, which will remain nameless, that looked legitimate, so I sent them an email requesting a CD with information. The CD was free, but they requested a credit card number to pay for shipping. It sounded like a reasonable request at the time, but here's where the problems began.
I printed out the information from the website, and upon further scrutiny I discovered that not only did I agree to pay shipping for the CD, the fine print stated that I would also be signed up with a wealth building company and charged $69.95 a month, if I didn't cancel within the first seven days of the free trial. I, of course, cancelled this "free" offer right away.
Not long after this incident, I discovered an unidentified charge on my business charge card from a company selling diet pills. After researching this on the internet, I found it was a large scam that has had numerous complaints from people who have never asked for these diet pills. In this case, I not only called the company to have the charge removed, I also cancelled the credit card, since someone obviously used illegal means to obtain my credit card number.
In a recent The Costco Connection magazine, an article was published about widespread online acai weight-loss double scams. Some of these programs are set-up to charge ongoing monthly amounts, and they make it extremely difficult to contact the vendors involved to cancel. Besides contacting your credit card company, the magazine's consumer advocate, David Horowitz, encouraged all consumers involved in these scams to also send the Federal Trade Commission a copy of any correspondence between you and your credit card company.
Please be aware that scams seem to be more rampant in this struggling economy when people can least afford to loose money and/or time to fix these fraudulent charges.
I found your site on Google and read a few of your other entires. Nice Stuff. I'm looking forward to reading more from you.
Posted by: Aaron Wakling | May 14, 2009 at 12:00 AM