Yep...these guys get rich of this crap. Not Lexus rich...4 ferraris in your 10 car garage rich.

Anyone notice that the "Uniform Consumer Account Control Act" would have the acronym UCACA? I kind of like it: U-CACA... "your sh--". Of course I should be be able to explicitly authorize them messing with my...

"Instead, you would get to decide what charges you authorize by explicitly authorizing them yourself."

Isn't it sad we have to such drastic steps to get the kind of control over our transactions we should absolutely already have?

Trilegiant (TLG) is a spin-off of Cendant, under the name of Affinion Group, a huge direct-marketing/membership venture. Note that Cendarnt is now AvisBudget, which explains the OP. TLG or Affinion Group does business under such names as

AOL AutoVantage
AOL Credit Alert
AOL Netmarket
AOL Travelers Advantage
AutoVantage
Buyers Advantage
Citishopper
Clever Clubhouse
CompleteHome
Credentials Services
Dental Plus Group Plan
Digital ProtectionPlus
Dinner On Us Club
Family FunSaver Club
Great Fun
Great Options
Health Saver
Homeowners Savings Network
Hot-Line
Identity Secure
Just For Me
Macy's Hot-Line
National Card Registry
Netmarket
OurCompleteHome.com
Pet Privileges
PrivacyGuard
Sears Discount Travel Club
Shoppers Advantage
Small Business Central
Today's Homeowner Values
Travel ER
Travelers Advantage

One of the most insidious offenders in this scam is Chase, which allows some operator to send out purported "checks" under the Chase banner, and only in very fine print on the back of the check can the recipient learn that cashing the check obligates them to two years' worth of monthly payments (or whatever, I don't remember the exact details). The program was some sort of unnecessary account insurance or credit card insurance.

It was especially despicable because it came from the bank, using an envelope with the bank's logo. Each time my elderly father got one, I had the devil of a time explaining to him that his bank was not sending him a gift that he could freely deposit into his account.

Those $9.25 checks come with a restrictive endorsement. A restrictive endorsement is something of a contract that when signed, binds you to the terms of the endorsement. The simplest thing to do is remember there is no free lunch and not cash a check just because someone you don't know sends you money.

@zacox: This sort of thing makes me wonder if you could somehow stick a fee back to the PAM company. What if you pay them by check, and write a contract on the check? Could you then bill them, and/or negate their billing? Could you pull all the wonderful stunts they pull against consumers, such as bad credit history, lawsuits, collection agencies, etc?

Why is this legal?

Shouldn't a court be able to invalidate a confusing and/or ridiculously complex contract?

@Difdi: The problem is that a restrictive endorsement has almost always been ruled insufficient by the court, unless the check on which it is written is accompanied by a separate statement explaining why the endorsement is there.

For example: just saying that your $10 for a $100 debt represents pay-in-full in the restrictive endorsement only won't hold up. But if you send them a letter explaining that you are paying $10 and that you expect it to be paid-in-full with only $10, and you also put the endorsement on the back of the check, they will generally be held to that if they tender that check.

The thing to remember though is that it is the consumer who always winds up losing out in the time it takes to bring any company to financial justice. It's the consumer who has collections and credit dings, lost money and other maladies. It's definitely not something to choose.

I just signed up for a 7-day free membership pass to a local gym, but I never took them up on it (cause I found out what their membership rates are, and I figured it was best practice not to tempt myself by trying out the gym at all). Would I still get charged? I didn't have to give them a credit card number, but this post has be worried. I'm about to send an email to the gym manager to make sure I won't get charged for anything.

@nstonep:

I want a Ferrari...

My wife fell for this once when she ordered something online. In the fine print, it said that it was going to charger a membership. It was something obscure like a knob for a washer. We didn't realize it until I saw the charge on the card and started investigating. They were quick to refund the charge and cancel.

This happened to me. I bought something off of Buy.com and lo and behold, there appeared a month later a $12.95 charge for something I didn't want or recognize. After calling and threatening a chargeback, they quickly refunded the money. I'll never deal with the scammers at Buy.com again.

@pecan 3.14159265: If you didn't explicitly cancel expect to get a bill in the mail. There is no "free" and NSA memberships when it comes to gyms.

@Brontide: I'm still suspicious. The gym manager e-mailed back to say that they won't be billing and would not even have a way of billing me. I'm still suspicious.

@Brontide: Actually, I took a look at my free pass that they sent me via e-mail and it turns out I never put down my mailing address (I have no idea why I would) so I don't think there's a way for them to send me a bill anyway.

@JGKojak: Unfortunately it is because you are technically giving them consent. However, I firmly believe that the line needs to be drawn somewhere legally with such things and the practice of PAM typically goes way beyond that line. Hell, some PAM practices even go as far as to make the consumer think they are receiving official government documents. I just got one the other day which did a fine job at simulating a document that looks like it came from the FHA.

@dragonfire81: It's kind of sad. You'd think that'd be pretty common sense.

@JGKojak: remember that Agency that was supposed to look after consumers that the Obama Administration proposed, and congress is in the process of gutting? There you go...

@zacox: Couldn't you take the check to a Cash Express and cash it there? Yeah, you won't get the full $9,25, but it also isn't deposited against your account.

@halcyondays: We had that at movietickets.com - one of the $10 discount offers, my son didn't take them up on it, but they still charged our account for it until I called.

Seems that ought to be considered credit card theft, since YOU didn't give them the credit card number. As as a merchant, I think it's a violation of your merchant agreement to distribute credit card info. So, for a variety of reasons, this should not be happening.

Maybe everyone ought to simple issue a chargeback first. By giving them the chance to make the refund (which they do VERY quickly, perhaps one would think too quickly for a legit business), they can fly under the radar more easily.

Chargeback first, ask questions later.

@pecan 3.14159265: Yea I would think you should be fine and they can't bill you, especially with no address or credit card number.

But you gotta get in the gym! It's nice for stress relief and also helps promote overall health and a sense of well-being. My gym membership is one of my happiest indulgences and only about $1.00 a day.

@henrygates: Same exact thing with my wife. I love how you have to read all those orders/websites carefully to make sure you aren't signing up for a mailing list/monthly charge/agree to send your info to another subsidary/etc.

@SacraBos: Good way to go, especially cause after so many chargebacks they would most likely lose their Visa/Mastercard account.

But companies like these probably have LLC names lined up for decades and would quickly just change their legal name and create a new account to start all over again.

I had a difficult time canceling credit fraud monitoring services accidentally acquired through a "free" credit check website. I went out of my way to try to find a legitimate credit check site, but apparently a lot of them do this.

Canceling this charge was absolute hell, and required at LEAST six phone calls.

The only way I was able to make it stop was by threatening to call the Ohio Attorney General's Office.

All charges were refunded.

T

Man I feel like I can never buy anything again. Why do I have to jump through so many hoops just to make sure I'm not scammed?

I'm looking for a deserted island. One with no special magnetic properties.

If the contract is on the back of the check, couldn't I cross it out then sign the check? If they contest that it's a contract, couldn't they be liable for check fraud or something of that nature?

Get to it pro-bono lawyers :)

@SacraBos: Its not the depositing in your personal account that starts the membership (or whatever they are going to charge you for). It's the fact that you tendered it in any way, shape or form. Depositing into checking, savings, money market, or cashing it anywhere from your bank to Wal-Mart to the Indian-run place down the street; it's all the same to them.

They have YOUR name on the front, and other identifying information about you, plus it's reasonable to assume that they track the check number and know to whom they sent that check.

The suggestion by SacraBos to initiate a chargeback is a great idea. It may work in some cases. Unfortunately, financial institutions and direct marketers that enter into these deals have put provisions in these contracts stating that the financial institutions will not process refund requests as chargebacks. This, of course, allows all involved in such deals to hide from the credit card systems the massive number of complaints about unauthorized charges.

Don't forget to watch out for those insidious FaceBook ads promising you things like free IQ tests. You spend several minutes answering basic questions that most 5th graders would know. They then ask you for your cell phone number so they can text message you your IQ score. What most people (kids included) don't see and/or read is the fine print at the bottom that signs you up for a membership to a ringtone (or similar) service at $24.95 per month.

@pecan 3.14159265: Ignore the mailing address/billing question. What are the terms of the free pass, if they obligate you to more than the 7 days you may have legally created a debt that they can collect on later.

That's creepy. I'm not dumb enough to give out my credit card info for any "free trial" unless it's something I actually do want and am totally willing to pay for, but I didn't realize that cashing a cheque could allow them to siphon funds from my account. I do read fine print and I do assume that there's no free lunch, so I wouldn't cash an unexpected cheque without thoroughly reading all portions of it first, and I do check my bank account two or three times a month when I pay bills...but I still find this scary because who needs the hassle of trying to make something like this go away?

Two Words every online shopper should know and love... PRE-PAID VISA. The small one time fee is worth it do avoid getting scammed by these companies.

Years ago, when I was part of the BMG music club, I got a phone call and some mumbly young man asked if I was SoandSo at my address. When I said yes, he mumbled some more gibberish and I had no idea what the call was about until a week later when some CDs by bands I didn't listen to showed up at my door with a note saying "Here are the CDs you ordered over the phone!" -- apparently by acknowledging that I was me and lived at the address they had on file, I had also consented to buying stuff I didn't want.

I sent the box back and immediately complained to customer service that I had been deceived by a telemarketer who spoke in a manner that was hard to understand, not to mention the bait-and-switch method of getting me to consent to something by asking me a very obvious question. I got my money back, then stopped using BMG.

Anyone else experience a telemarketer using the mumble approach?

Yea, my mother in-law gets tons of these too. Fortunately, she always asks me if it's OK to deposit them. The worst though, are the many "charities" that solicit her every day.

@pecan 3.14159265: You could go to them and get it in writing, if you want to feel particularly secure.

@CappyCobra: I don't know, but if you do it, don't forget to make a copy before sending it in.

I recently had something like this happen to me with a product called "Stopzilla." A charge for $34.95 appeared on my Chase account for Stopzilla, yet I'd never even heard of this product, much less ordered it. In fact it's a PC product, whereas I use Macs. When I called to ask for an explanation, they immediately removed the charge, no explanation. Makes me wonder if this too was a PAM.

@mazzic1083: Yeah, I love how at the end of an order or payment process they put this "Continue" button on the screen and if you click it, suddenly you are opting into one of thes shlocky "Advantage" programs or "three-way credit report monitoring", for "only $29.95 a month."

Gods.

@kaceetheconsumer: They used to use this kind of free check scam to automatically switch your long-distance service. You'd cash the check and suddenly your LD was MCI instead of AT&T. I actually used those checks a couple of times, knowing what I was getting into, but many people got fooled.

@JGKojak: It's legal because it takes two to create a contract. They cannot have consent if you shred the check; end of story. Some of you have to learn that you cannot say "yes" to a contractural obligation and then back out at your convienence because later you changed your mind. Say say NO.

@Brontide: Brontide's correct. You should write management and tell them that you are ending the agreement and make sure that you get the letter to them before the last day of the trial and keep a copy for yourself.

@wasabipeas: Oh yeah. This approach was being used by 3rd parties getting customer's to switch their phone service back in the mid to late 90s. This is what I read. The 3rd parties would have legal business names such as "no thanks" and "not today", so when you would respond to their phone solicitation by saying "no thanks" or "not today" you were essentially "consenting" to their agreement and they would switch your phone service to AT&T, etc. Very deceptive.