Free Trials are NEVER FREE
With so many sites offering so called " FREE TRIALS" be sure that you read the fine print. The terms and conditions are generally at the bottom of the site and details how you will be charged in the future.
People make several mistake that cost a lot of time and money. One of serveral major blunders was signing up blindly for " FREE TRIALS" just because they were free! You know the ones that ask you for your credit card details, saying that "this is for record purposes only and your card will not be charged".
People make a huge mistakes when they sign up for a 14 Day or one-month free trial program. They expect that when the one-month was up they would get a notification saying that my free-trial period was up and ask to confirm if they wanted to continue.
But you will receive no such notification, in fact not even an email confirming that a sum had been charged. Instead it was only when you have received your next month's credit card statement that you learn that you have been charged many $$$$. Now as a newbie just starting out online, you could ill-afford the money, especially as it was to be a monthly recurring payment!
You frantically looked around for a way to cancel. Being a naïve web shopper, you had not read any instructions on cancellation procedures! In fact you had totally forgotten about signing up. You can't remember you username, password website, phone number or where you even purchased the so called " FREE TRIAL".
But somehow after several tries, you managed to log-in to their website and contacted someone at their help desk. When I asked why you had not been notified, the reply was: `It was already stated in the free trial offer you signed up for!'. When you ask to cancel, you are directed to another department, before you finally managed to cancel the subscription!
Costly lesson learned - always read the fine print!
Read the terms and conditions, save a copy of the email you get as a receipt ( assuming they send you one). Many companies have no information in your package, no phone number to call, no website to cancel or any other way of contacting the company. These companies assume you will forget, not save any information from your order and never read the fine print.
If a program says `one-week free trial', immediately check the fine print to see what happens after the one week is up. How much would you have to pay? Would it be a monthly recurring billing? Would it be automatically charged to your credit card or Paypal? What are the cancellation procedures? And so on.
There are 1000's of FREE TRIALS on many types of products on the web. Always read the terms and conditions, save the website in your favorites, print off a receipt, save the email and be very careful with any other offers that they many have on the site.
The above caution also applies to those " $1 Trial " programs.
Tuesday, December 20, 2011
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