Hi guys. I've had this happen to me twice, so I thought I'd pass along the experience. 

Have you ever checked out membership rates on porn sites and found that they offer trial memberships for 2 or 3 days for 2 or 3 bucks?

Twice I tried this on different sites. The same thing happened both times.

 

I put the charge on my credit card.Then, I get an e-mail back with "Thank you for joining". There they told me that unless I canceled the 'trial' it would automatically re-bill after the 3 days at their standard monthly rate ($30 in this case). I canceled it right away because the last time I did this, I missed the fine print that said you have to cancel 3 days prior to the membership ending. It's only a fucking 3-day membership to begin with. At that time I called whatever web site it was and talked them into reversing the charge. I also got a cancellation e-mail from this site.
 

Note that even when you buy this and then cancel it 5 minutes later, you still have access for the 3 days. At least I did in both cases.

 

What was different the 2nd time was that I got a 2nd e-mail that looked like another 'Thank you' so I ignored it. In fact it was from a sister (brother?) web site that also charged me $2.95 for a 3 day membership. Since I didn't read it, I also didn't cancel it.

The 3rd day was a Monday. I got a phone call from Chase Bank's fraud dept asking whether I authorized a $29.95 charge from some company in Israel. I told them no way and explained what happened. They took off that charge along with the smaller charges for $2.95 each.

 

By the way, Hats off to Chase, who picked up on this right away, by 8 AM for a charge that came in shortly after midnight, and they weren't going to post it to my account without  hearing from me.

 

My advice is to stay away from these small teaser rates.

You will always get charged for something you don;t want and it's almost always coming from a web site operating in Europe or elsewhere outside the US. This time Israel. I followed links from a well known legit web site to these guys and they looked legit also.

 

Even if you get the charges reversed, its a pain in the ass. Because my card was now 'out there' I figured it was only a matter of time before it was sold, so I canceled and had them re-issue the card.

So buyer beware! Check out a site as thoroughly as you can. Find and read the small print. Follow up right away to make sure you haven't been charged further.

 

One point I want to make with the Banks. They will ask if you ever did business with this company at all.  If you answer yes, then it's not considered fraud. It's just a dispute. They will bounce you out of fraud and into regular customer service. From there they will only temporarily reverse the charge, then send you a form to put your complaint in writing. Then you are expected to try and reach the merchant for credit yourself. If you are unsuccessful, they will try to contact them...after 30 days. If its fraud, they just take the charge right off and that's the end of it.

In my case, had the charge come from the site that I authorized the $2.95 from, I would have had to go the regular customer service route. Because it was the sister site AND I had never authorized any charge from them, that meant I had not done any business with them in the first place. That's fraud.

As far as the consumer is concerned it's fraud either way, but this is the red tape you may have to deal with.

 

Anyone have a similar experience and want to tell us about it. Send me your story to douggmvblog@gmail.com  and I will post it.