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We get some darn good comments here at the Electron Plumber from people sharing their research into one offer or another and if it’s worthwhile or a rip-off. And sometimes they are so good that they deserve to be seen by more than the people reading the comments on that one post.
We received this from Jack Dalton of SongConnect.net about his experience on our Google Adwork Scam post with one of the Google Biz Kit sites that tries to sign you up for 3 or more other monthly charges in the hopes that you will not cancel all of them in time. Any offer or site which would bill you monthly is called a “continuity program” in the internet marketing business.
We thought his story too good not to share:
I knew it was a scam when I saw that all the supposed links to supporting information went instead to the sign-up form. And I still signed up for it. Why? I had $9 left on a pre-paid card that’s expiring in a week. They only wanted 99 cents of this “use it or lose it fund” that I don’t want to give to the card issuer, or (worse) the government. So I thought I’d find out what the ad meant by “post several small text advertisements on websites in the Google network. These ads will showcase products that are currently part of the Google Adwords system.”
Before clicking “ok” I was given the option to uncheck a box signing up for a continuity program. Then, at the bottom of the next page was a form to sign up for another $2.95 shipping charge on top of the $.99 and incur yet another continuity program. I think that was the “$80 lighter” one. But still, I had the choice to bypass that one. Finally, they told me I had trials to 3 programs totaling $85 in continuity which had already started. One was a 7 day trial, one was a 14 day trial, and the other was a 21 day trial. Talk about a confusing array of continuity to stop! And this was true “hidden continuity,” not the optional ones I had declined.
I’ll log on to see what these contain. (After all, they’re “free.” ) But such is the beauty of a prepaid card expiring in 4 days. They will never see a dime of that continuity, even if I don’t get around to canceling! And the 99 cents? If they do ship a physical product, they will lose money on that as well! (They must get continuity payments from a high enough percentage of clients to cover the losses from such as I.)
But I will give them this much credit. They are relentless in their pursuit of the sale. And who knows? Maybe the continuity programs contain enough value that some might opt to keep them. I’ll keep you posted on that if I find my way back to this blog.
So I haven’t personally seen the Google Biz Kit – Google Adworks – Google Fortune – Google Whatever offer he’s talking about, as there are hundreds of them out there now, but it should sound very familiar to anyone who frequents this site.
Come back tomorrow for the second half of Jack’s report on what he found inside the site he signed up for. It’s really informative!
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