WritersLife.org & Ty Cohen Deceptive continuity (monthly billing) program Internet

BE AWARE!  WRITER'S LIFE IS A RIPOFF!

I order the FREE Writing Kit and paid 99 cent shippiing.  This is offered at Writer's Life .org or writerslife.org, and then I signed up for the upsell deluxe "kit" for $7.95. Apparently there was some video involved.  I don't even remember seeing any video.  I was charged $.99 and another $7.95.

Then 2 weeks later a strange charge for $19.93 showed on my bank card. I called 866-752-9968 and reached someone who barely spoke English. She said it was a monthly membership and that somewhere in the video I didn't watch it said towards the end that if I didn't cancel in 14 days, I would be rolled into the monthly program. I told her to cancel it, and she said she would send an email confirming the cancellation. If and when I receive that email, I will contact my bank to try to get my $19.93back.

This is the kind of junk marketing that caused the FTC to put out regulations against continuity marketing, as this is called. Until about a year ago, there were way too many people ripping people off buy not fully disclosing that they would repeatedly bill your credit card for months and months until you noticed.  The new FTC regulations supposedly require FULL DISCLOSURE be made on a website before someone agrees to be continuously billed, thus the name continuity marketing.  After I report this to my bank, I will also report it to the FTC.  This kind of scam is not supposed to be legal any more

The only time I got stuck in one of these before I was able to get the current month's charge refunded, but my bank would not refund the previous charges because they said I had to notify them almost immediately if I wanted to dispute a charge.

My only advice, which I did not follow, if is you are ever tempted to sign up for anything like this, use some kind of gift card or rebate card so that your losses are at least limited to the amount on the card.  No that these crooks have my bank debit card number, I may have to get it changed.  That was the only way to stop the previous crook from billing me.