A Credit Card Warning

Whatever you do, do not cash a check sent to you from any credit card company, or you may be signing up for something called "Shopper's Advantage" without knowing it.

I don't usually write about things like this, but I feel the need to warn you about a pretty sneaky scam that I fell victim to. A few months ago I signed up for an Amazon.com® Visa® card, through Chase, because they were running an online special. By signing up you got $20 off your purchase on Amazon and a bunch of other benefits. I went for it, because I knew that the card would only be used for a few purchases, mainly gifts and mainly from Amazon. I ended up using the card quite a bit, and started managing my account online at Chase.com. I even took advantage of a balance transfer special that Chase was offering.

Today I was online checking to see when a payment was due, and noticed a charge of $9.99 to someplace called "TLG•Shopper." Well I know for a fact I have not used this card for any purchases of any sort since I made the balance transfer. So I looked at my whole statement and lo and behold, TLG•Shopper was getting $9.99 a month from me for the past 6 months.

I immediately called Chase to find out what this was. They transferred me to Shopper's Advantage. I was told that I activated this account when I cashed a check for $10 that was sent to me through Chase. I vaguely remember getting a check in the mail and, thinking it was part of the promotion Amazon.com was running, I went ahead and cashed it. I think of myself as a pretty smart person, so this Shopper's Advantage thing must have been buried in some fine print somewhere, because I was COMPLETELY unaware that's what I was doing. I have even received checks with similar "offers" attached to them and thrown them away. This one didn't seem to have a catch to it at all.

I explained to the person at Shopper's Advantage that I wanted to cancel my "account" immediately. I got a pretty involved sales pitch to try to get me to keep the account – to which I stated that if I didn't even know what it IS, and if I was deriving NO benefit from it, was WHY would I keep letting them take $9.99 of my money every month! I know it probably does no good, but I told the person that this was a very sneaky way to take money from people, and that I will dispute every charge made to my account until this is made right.

Don't do what I did. At the very least my advice is to read every tiny bit of small print before cashing these little checks. Even then you may not catch it. Best to just pitch them. A little $10 check may end up costing you $60 or more. And, check your credit card statement carefully to see if you have accidentally fallen victim to this scam.