DBW - The Grant Express Greant Funding Search The company charged me $69.95 for a cd which supposedly costed $1.98. I was lucky to have that much in my checking account. I saw no 7 day trial period listed, although was called my a couple of oth columbus, Ohio
I ordered a grant research cd which was listed on a women's small business grant website. It was listed #1 as the best offer. It was listed as costing $1.98.
As I logged in, I received my password, etc, but saw no info regarding a trial or monthly fee of $69.95...had I seen that, I would not have signed up. I did however, get called by another company who somehow got my exact same info and had signed me up for another monthly fee.....I promptly called them the day after I had ordered my cd to cancel my "trial."
Had I realized I was signed up for this, I NEVER would have ordered this stupid cd. I only wanted info for my small business and as it was promoted as a well-researched and well-reputed company, I believed I was making a good business choice.
I contacted this company as the money came out of my bank account and I did NOT even get a bill in the mail and was told that it was non-refundable. I was told that the company I believed I ordered my info from was actually one and the same as the one who billed me. I am VERY unhappy with this.
1 Updates & Rebuttals
ReactorCore
Victoria,British Columbia,
Canada
You didn't see it, because you didn't look for it.
#2
Mon, August 17, 2009
This is another example of how you need to look carefully all over a site and at all the links provided.
That clause about the additional $69.95 is there. The thing is, people get so caught up in the heady whiffs of the potential of "free money", that they throw common sense out of the window and dance blithely onwards, not checking the details like they should.
That common sense I'm speaking of would begin by an alarm bell going off in your head that $1.95 for a CD, put out by a company, just doesn't even begin to cut the mustard as far as overhead goes. That company has to pay for it's web provider, server space through that provider, it also has to pay all it's employees at least minimum wage, pay for shipping of a product (the CD) that, in itself, costs money to purchase, as well as pay for the resources to put the data on that CD (CD burners and computer systems). It's not one guy sitting at a computer at his home, burning off CDs with all this great info for your benefit out of a sense of altruism.
Now, realistically, how long do you think that company would stay in business if they offered you that CD at just the $1.95 fee? That's right, they wouldn't last 24 hours.
Now, I've visited these sites. Quite a few of them, and they're all the same. Grants, working for Google Ads... there's a lot of flavours to choose from, but they all have the same basic, cookie cutter approach; get your interest with that promise of delicious free money, lead you along a pre-set path of pages to the end of the pitch and then sell you the product. If you try to back out, last minute at the last step, you'll get a pop up screen telling you something along the lines of don't to go and give up this wonderful opportunity and/or they can only hold your kit for "X amount of hours".
Note how they never offer a method of payment that will allow you to make the purchase full up-front?
How am I doing so far?
The thing is, that if you scroll to the bottom of the page on these sites, you'll see a link (usually) labeled "Terms". If you click that, all the internal shenanigans of what you'll really be charged and how are laid bare, all out and in the open. This is how they can dodge the charge of "FRAUD!" that people are slinging, because that info you didn't bother looking for, is in fact, freely available on their site. It's up to you, the consumer, to make sure you seek out, read and understand that "fine print".
The practice itself by the vendor may indeed be a little shady and misleading, but remember that the company selling the product can simply point to that section of the site and say it's all your fault, which it in fact is. As said, people either get too caught up in the "something for nothing" mentality, or are simply too lazy to make that simple, extra click of the mouse and spend that extra bit of time to safeguard themselves.
When I first started investigating these "grant" and "work for Google" type sites after reading Rip-Off reports on them, and having gotten spam in my inbox from them myself, the real information of the real cost of these CDs took me all of about 7 seconds to find. Literally.
Finally, if it sounds too good to be true, then it is.