To my dismay, while reading over my credit card statement online, I saw 4 months worth of $19.99 charges with a $1.00 charge following close behind it. The $19.99 charges were from www.privacymatters123.com the $1.00 charges were from www.savingsmart.com. I called my husband, who also had no idea where these charges were coming from.
I called the 1-800 number listed by the charge descriptions. The customer service rep then had to explain to me that it was probably from a free credit report we had received. Free? My husband then confirmed that he had gotten a credit report, but was unaware that he now had a membership costing us $19.99 per month for unlimited access to our credit report. The customer rep would not reimburse any of the past charges, but agreed to cancel the membership. Since our card was close to the limit on some occasions, it also gave us over the limit charges on our card. Our FREE credit report ended up costing us $100's.
Just today I noticed that I have still been receiving the $1.00 charges. 6 months worth. These continued after I had cancelled the privacymatters membership. Apparantly the FREE credit report gave us memberships to more than 1 company. We have learned to read the fine print and check our credit card statements more often. But I have no respect for companies that trick you into things with their fine print.
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