Tuesday, October 28, 2008

I've Been Scammed!!

This just makes me so mad. With all we have going on, I'm constantly online either researching all the different ailments my kids have, finding homeschool resources or looking for ways to make some extra cash. This is what I was doing and got scammed. Snookered. Taken. I can see how elderly people can get ripped off so easily. If I wasn't going to be so busy writing a book about the big puzzles that my children are, I would get involved with keeping people from being taken.

Several months ago Holland's OT told me about 2 different grants. One was for this exercise vehicle and another was a dollar amount to help with medical bills. I didn't get either grant, but I thought there must be more and scoured online to find out. It was impossible to find anything. It's like back in high school when all the guidance counselors told me there were just hundreds of thousands of dollars to be had in scholarships. Well, I didn't live in New Jersey; my family didn't farm and I wasn't the daughter of an entomologist. (That's about how crazy they all were). I found several companies that offered CD's to help you navigate the web to find all this money. FREE MONEY! whoopie! I found one that charged shipping only. I got the CD and it wasn't any more clear than what I was already looking at. I gave up trying to figure out how access to services had anything to do with getting or writing grants.

Tonight super-hero is checking our balance online (again). We are so tight and can't figure out why. He doesn't get paid until Friday, but I had to buy food and Holland has two doctor appointments tomorrow. I'm in the kitchen cooking dinner and he starts yelling. I come in to see what in the world is going on. Turns out we have been paying for a service that I was conned into signing up for. That CD I bought? It was actually a monthly service fee for accessing the information. Are you kidding me? I thought that's what the CD was?? And to top it off, I mysteriously signed up for THREE of these! It goes back to like April. It was about $300. Three times every month. And because I didn't "cancel" (cancel WHAT?) within 7 days of receiving this valuable information, they automatically took the money out of my checking account. I cannot believe they are actually getting away with this. I found other people online who had the same thing happen to them. There's no phone number to contact them; just an email address.

Now I've got to figure out if Hardy Myers (for you non-Oregonians, he's our state's Attorney General) even cares if this is happening. I can file a complaint, but what will actually be done?
It's just unreal to me that a company can be so vague and manipulative to the consumer.

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