Released: May 07, 2006

Same old scam, every month

Source: By Don Oldenburg, Washington Post

Your first clue something’s wrong is when you notice a random charge on your monthly credit card statement, maybe as little as $9.95, paid to a company whose name draws a blank.

That’s followed by confusion because you have no recollection of buying anything from any such company. And, then, anger wells into consumer outrage when you discover that you hadn’t noticed the same stinkin’ $9.95 charge from the same suspect company on your statement the month before, and the month before that, and . . . well, you get the idea.

“I was asleep at the switch, so I’ve got to shoulder some of the blame . . . but I think this might be a scam,” says Ben Beach, an editor at the District-based Wilderness Society, who last September noticed just such a $9.95 charge on his Visa statement from AP9 Connections. The charge began seven months earlier. He has no idea how the company got his credit card number.

Beach called the company’s toll-free number on the statement, and a customer-service rep told him his wife “had signed up for this discount travel service while on [the travel Web site] Orbitz,” he says, insisting that his wife never clicks “yes” on those annoying pop-up ads.

Read Full Article: Same old scam, every month