Dec 16 2008
Lies and Deception
I am seeing a gimmick showing up in my mail from time to time that has begun to disturb me. Credit card companies are sending out these little congratulatory checks for small amounts of money, oh, say $8.50 or $9.25. They encourage you to cash them. It’s their gift to you.
Problem is, if you read the small print, when you cash these checks you have, in effect, signed up for some sort of “credit protection” policy that will be billed to your credit card to the tune of something like $64.99 semi-annually. So, for a whopping $8.50 you are now responsible for a basically useless charge that will keep recurring from now until the end of time.
Now, I consider myself to be savvy enough to realize that if something looks too good to be true, it almost certainly is. In fact, I am not so desperate for $8.50 that I will automatically grab at every dollar bill that comes my way. However, not all adults are so wary of “free gifts.”
I know of an elderly woman who cashed one of these “gifts” before her more astute daughter found out about it. The daughter has spent the last three months trying to get this ridiculous protection plan removed from her mother’s credit card. To add insult to injury, the woman is now receiving these gifts of “free money” on an almost weekly basis. The daughter is on high alert trying to make sure her elderly mother does not fall prey to this trickery again. They poor woman still does not quite understand just how deceptive and injurious this situation is in her life.
I received one of these checks in my mail today. I automatically shredded the paper. Thinking over the situation now, the next time I receive one of these checks, I think I will turn the matter over to the attorney generals office. They have a division to handle deceptive practices. Anytime someone is tricked into a purchase they did not intend to make, I call that deception.
Being Fit Over 50 means being prudent with our finances as well. For many of us, this time of life means watching over the affairs of our aging parents, those who must struggle much more to be Fit Over 50 (70, 80, 90 . . .) We need to watch over our elders. Hopefully someone will be there to watch over us when the time comes.
That’s horrible! My mother used to fall prey to a lot of stuff, but nothing really bad. She did end up with about 100 Reader’s Digest books, and she kept getting these “free” gifts, little chintzy stuff that invariably ended up in our Christmas stockings.