I'm sure all of us have seen the freecreditreport.com commercials at some point. You know, the ones with the catchy songs about accessing your credit score. Well I personally tried to sign up for it the other day thinking that I would be able to check all three of my credit scores for no cost to me. What I did not know was that it was a free trial and that I would be charged $15 every month for access to my credit report. Unfortunately, I did not find that out until 2 months after I initially signed up for the trial. When I did try to cancel my subscription over the phone, two of the customer service people hung up on me. Eventually I did get it canceled, but I'm $30 poorer now because I did not read the fine print. This taught me to never accept any of these "free" ads without reading the fine print.
That was unfortunate that it happened to you and I am glad you canceled it after finding out and they did not charge more. Honestly, I would have probably did the same thing and not read the fine print. Although advertisements are not supposed to false advertise, according to the book, it is also not always accurate. Most things are unstated in the advertisements and freecreditreport.com most likely did not want others to know that there was a monthly charge after the trial. In the end, companies just want more customers and leave the impression that choosing their product is the right decision.
ReplyDeleteMan that's too bad :(
ReplyDeleteSee I think a lot of the commercials are lying. It is pure lie or they don't tell you thing in advance like the fee you mentioned. It's a trick that ads use so that it doesn't scare customers away. But when you said that you tried to call the customers service and that they hang up on you I think that is very rude and unprofessional. I was wondering how did you manage to cancel your subscription? I also noticed that the warning informations or fees they always write it in a supper small font so that you don't see it.
Huh - that's really interesting. Funny as well.
ReplyDeleteI mean, it sucks for you, what with losing thirty bucks and all, but the fact that site and advertisements are based so strongly on the claim of being "Free" makes this pretty amusing. I always figured there was some sort of catch, but never really gave much thought to it. I was generally just enjoying the foot tappin’, finger snappin’ music, and giving the company the benefit of the doubt – I guess it’s a bit deceptive in that way.
Kudos on the screenshot, by the way. Some comic quality right there.