There has been a lot of talk online lately about the company Cash4Gold that advertised during the Super Bowl at a cost of $3 million. In a nutshell, they are apparently offering to buy your gold for about one-third of what others are offering and possibly a lot less than its actual melt down value.
The Consumerist blog writes an article titled “How To Avoid Getting Ripped Off By Cash4Gold“. They explain how another blogger sent some gold to Cash4Gold to see how much he could get and discovered that they are ripping people off. Of course Cash4Gold is not the only company giving consumers a bad deal.
Freecreditreport.com and similar web sites that offer a free credit report are a big rip off too. They are using the same marketing model as Cash4Gold. Spend a lot on advertising, build brand familiarity, take advantage of the consumer’s lack of knowledge and profit by selling them something that they don’t understand or can already get for free.
I just checked out freecreditreport.com again today. They will give you a free credit report, which you can get for free anyway and sign you up for a seven day trial of their Triple Advantage Credit Monitoring service. If you don’t cancel after the trial period, they will bill you $14.95 per month ($179.40 per year) until you cancel (see screen shot below). Now that’s a rip-off if I ever saw one. You can monitor your own credit report yourself for free.
If they get 1,000 consumers to fall for their advertising, that’s $179,400 per year. I wouldn’t doubt that at least 100,000 American consumers have been sold by their ads. That’s a nice $17.9 million in revenue for Experian every year. No wonder why they advertise all over the place on radio, television, online, in your Yahoo email, and elsewhere. They are virtually ubiquitous.
I wonder if Cash4Gold is making $17.9 millions dollars a year too.
FreeCreditReport.com screenshot of $14.95 monthly charge
They don’t appear to be doing anything illegal. They disclose on their web site the credit monitoring service you will be signed up for if you do not cancel the seven day trial. Their web site sure looks nice, but just because something looks nice and is not illegal does not mean it is right or good for the consumer.
I also wonder if they make it as easy to cancel the trial service as they do to sign up for the service. Let me know if you have had an experience with canceling their Triple Advantage Credit Monitoring service.