14.95 Reasons To Not Use ProFlowers This Mother’S Day.

Posted: May 3rd, 2011 | Author: Joe | Filed under: Scam, spending | Tags: mothers day, online flowers, proflowers, Scam | No Comments »

Mother’s day is upon us once more, and that means flowers!

I know, it’s tempting to head over to the ProFlowers website and order a special delivery for mom. Especially with television, internet and radio ads everywhere you turn. But there’s a big reason (in my opinion) not to do so.

It’s not that ProFlowers has a bad product or shoddy service, though that certainly seems to be the case for some people.

For the record, the flowers that I ordered were in excellent condition and lasted quite a long time. My problem was far worse than poor quality flowers..

In fact, my problem with ProFlowers was that the process of ordering flowers on their website led to my being enrolled in a “coupon program” resulting in a monthly $14.95 charge on my credit card – without my knowledge!

You don’t need to be enrolled in some credit card billing scam. You can bypass ProFlowers and support local florists.

LocateAFlowershop.com lets you search for florists by City and State or by zip code.

FTD.com lets you schedule a floral delivery online and hands that delivery off to a local florist to complete. TeleFlora is yet another online floral site.

With so many alternatives, why risk unauthorized monthly credit card charges with ProFlowers?

Proflowers Click Fraud Scam Hits The Big Time.

Posted: October 12th, 2010 | Author: Joe | Filed under: Scam | Tags: ezsver, proflowers, Scam | No Comments »

A while ago I shared how I had been the victim of an unauthorized credit card billing scam after ordering some flowers from the Proflowers website. It seems that Proflowers is not the only company to associate itself with these scam companies, and they’re finally getting some heat put on them.

According to this article, Orbitz, Priceline.com and VistaPrint have all partnered with similar “click fraud” companies in the past – and now they’re disassociating with them, due to customer complaints!

“ last year a federal judge in Boston approved a $10 million class-action settlement against marketer Webloyalty; the New York State Attorney General’s office recently reached $18.5 million in settlements with two separate marketers and some of their retail partners; Congress and the Federal Trade Commission have investigated. And in spite of the profits it yields, even online shopping sites have started to realize that subjecting their customers to these kinds of scammy offers is bad for business”

The article goes on to explain exactly what happened to me (and many others) at ProFlowers.com:

“These offers look harmless enough. After shelling out $75 for a bouquet of flowers .., internet shoppers are presented with an offer: “Click here to save” $5 or $10 on your next purchase. But there’s no coupon to be found, only an invitation to join a discount club for a small monthly fee.”

So far, so good – IF the customer could just say “no” to joining the “discount club”. The problem though is that the initial click to save on your next purchase transfers your credit card information, and they “enroll” you automatically! In the case of “Ez Saver” (the fraud company that got me on my ProFlowers order), that enrollment resulted in the automatic billing of $14.95 a month to my credit card. How anyone thought this wasn’t fraud is beyond me, but I’m glad to see the authorities cracking down on the practice.

All told, in my case I was charged for 2 or 3 months before I caught on. For their part, the Ez saver folks agreed to cancel my “membership” and completely reverse the charges since I discovered them in time. Incidentally, this is one of the reasons it’s good to have a credit card. If I had made this initial purchase with my debit card instead, I would have had a harder time not paying those charges if Ez Saver was not cooperating and I had to tell my bank I didn’t authorize those charges. At least by paying with credit, I could have disputed the charges with my credit card company and there would be no loss of money on my part while the matter was being settled.

Is Peachtree Settlement Funding Scam?

Posted: April 26th, 2010 | Author: Joe | Filed under: Scam | Tags: Peachtree, settlement funding, structured settlement | 3 Comments »

I’ve been hearing another round of obnoxious commercials on the radio again. This one is for Peachtree Settlement Funding, and they definitely play to the “I want it now” mentality of people.

With lines like:

It’s your money, and you should have it!

Why wait?

Get your money in one lump sum.

Life doesn’t wait, why should you?

It’s a compelling come-on. It’s also quite obnoxious due to the whiney voice of the guy who plays the customer, but such is life in the radio ad world I suppose.

As far as the ad itself goes, it makes many implied emotional pleas. For example, It’s your money, and you should have it! This is an example of sort of implied argument made throughout the ad, namely that someone else is unfairly keeping your money from you, and that Peachtree will right that wrong for you. The remaining 3 quotes all play to the sense of urgency and immediate gratification – you shouldn’t have to wait for your money.

So the ad is annoying and uses the sorts of advertising tools and techniques designed to convince the customer to use their service. That’s fine, no crime there. But are they a scam?

Let’s back up a bit first and look at what it is they offer.

What is structured settlement funding anyway?

A person can acquire a structured settlement when he wins a court case, the lottery or is the beneficiary of an annuity. All that means is that the person is entitled to a set amount of money on a regular basis for a specified amount of time. For example, if you win the lottery you may be entitled to $1,000 per month for the next 20 years.

That’s the concept behind a structured settlement annuity – a sum of money has been invested on the person’s behalf in exchange for regular payments. What a structured settlement purchaser like Peachtree does is to buy that annuity at a discount and provide the person with a one-time, lump sum payment.

So, is it a scam?

To be honest, I don’t know. this guy clearly thinks they are. He claims to be a former employee of Peachtree, but who knows if that’s true. They do have an A+ rating from the Better Business Bureau, and much of what the “former employee” writes about are aggressive sales tactics.

But what about the underlying service? Is settlement funding worth the cost?

I suppose that depends on the cost. some things to consider about settlement funding:

You will receive a substantially lower amount than what the settlement promised. This is because you are exchanging future value and interest payments for a larger sum (larger than the monthly payments) today. It will also be less due to whatever fees and costs are associated with the settlement company.

Your monthly payments will be worth less over time. This is simply because the structured settlement is not likely to have a provision for indexing to inflation, so your dollar will be worth less in 15 years than it is today.

It’s a bit of a numbers game and will be different for every case, but for me it comes down to the cost of the settlement funding service. If there was no cost, or a nominal one, then I’d take the lump sum payment today and invest it to keep ahead of inflation. That’s all the insurance company that holds the structured settlement is doing anyway, but they keep the profit.

2009, year in review.

Posted: December 30th, 2009 | Author: Joe | Filed under: 10 Investment Tips for Beginners, Credit, Debt, Economy, Investing, Scam | Tags: 401(k), bailout, blogging, Cramer, Credit, Credit Cards, Debt, Investing, Stock Market, Stocks | No Comments »

What a year it’s been!

As the history books close on 2009, I thought it might be nice to take a look back on the topics that were hot on Simple Debt-Free Finance over the past year.

401(k) Plans.

2009 saw a lot of talk about the future of the 401(k). It seems only natural, given that it is one of the major means of saving for retirement for many American workers who had just seen those savings drop like a stone in the 2008 stock market crash. A lot of the talk was centered around ways to “fix” the 401(k) when it isn’t broken. This bothered me enough to blog about it in that post as well as Fixing What Isn’t Broken and Why 401K Retirement Plans Really Don’t Work And How To Fix Them

Many workers, like myself, saw their company contributions to 401(k) plans cut or “temporarily” suspended. My response to that was to give my 401(k) some TLC, a move which paid off when my balance returned to pre-crash levels in the 3rd quarter of 2009.

Bank Failures.

Another hot topic of the beginning of the year was bank failures. So many failures naturally led many to wonder what the FDIC insurance limits cover.

Investing.

2008 was a big year for gold, and 2009 was even bigger. Such a bullish environment for gold led Rosland Capital to offer Gold Eagle coins for IRA accounts.

The 2008 crash created an historic opportunity for investors to “buy low”, but it also offered many reminders of what not to do. To that end, I shared Jim Cramer’s 10 commandments of stock trading.

Since the crash created a great opportunity for new investors to get into stocks at levels unseen in a decade, I put together a list of 10 investment tips for beginners:

1 Follow The Rules
2 Be Aware Of Taxes
3 Don’t Confuse Investing With Trading
4 Tune Out The Media
5 Don’t Tune Out Too Much
6 Pay Attention To Risk
7 Don’t Avoid Reality
8 Don’t Fall For Hot Stock Tips
9 Don’t Try To Time The Market
10 Try Before You Buy

In other news, some investing sites seemed to want to attack index fund investing in all the wrong ways. I had to respond to their criticism of index fund investing.