Travelodge is gonna pay me $18 to stay at their hotel

[bikebum]

So my lady and I are doing an out of town bike century ride and I booked a room at Travelodge for $60 with a discount code from the ride organizer. She called to make sure they have internet access, and the operator offered us a $40 rebate on the room. It's one of those deals where you sign up for a service and pay $1 for the first month, and if you forget to cancel they charge you $16 a month after the first month.

Just to be sure I asked, "So I can sign up for $1 for the first month, you send me a check for $40, I can cancel anytime, and as long as I cancel before 30 days have passed you will only charge me $1?"

She said something like, "Yes, but we are confident you will enjoy the [whatever it was, I don't remember] enough to keep it."

So as I was signing up she offered me some other service, "Great Fun" I think, with the same exact deal. So I got that one too.

40-1+40-1-60= $18 profit to stay at their hotel and do a little work with the receipt, mail, and 2 phone calls to cancel. Sweet!

[The Money Monk]

sweet action dude. I love gaming the system like this.

Just don't forget to cancel the services!

[unix_kung_fu]

good job! but be prepared to for two 40+ minute phone calls to cancel.

I remember I signed up for CLEAR wireless internet a couple years ago. It was a 30 day trial. I lived in a highrise at the time with one wall being entirely glass and still couldn't get a signal.

So I called to cancel.

I remember constantly chanting to the rep on the other end of the line "no, no, no, cancel please, please cancel my account, cancel cancel cancel no no no, I wanna cancel" over and over while he kept reading his scripts.

I hope you have a much more pleasant experience than I ever did with those free trial but call before 30 day offers!

[bikebum]

good job! but be prepared to for two 40+ minute phone calls to cancel.

I remember I signed up for CLEAR wireless internet a couple years ago. It was a 30 day trial. I lived in a highrise at the time with one wall being entirely glass and still couldn't get a signal.

So I called to cancel.

I remember constantly chanting to the rep on the other end of the line "no, no, no, cancel please, please cancel my account, cancel cancel cancel no no no, I wanna cancel" over and over while he kept reading his scripts.

I hope you have a much more pleasant experience than I ever did with those free trial but call before 30 day offers!

Oh shit, I didn't consider this possibility. Well, I'll give an update when I try to cancel.

[Pootie22]

If you have a Bank of America credit card there's a pretty cool trick you can for these type of offers (you might be able to do it with other cards but i don't know of others). There is a thing called "shop safe" in the bank of america website that lets you generate a brand new credit card number (primarily for shopping online) and you can set the expiration date and a dollar amount limit on that new card number (you still have your original card and that one works fine, this is more of a temporary card number for shopping online). So you go in, generate a new card number set a spend limit of $2 and use this credit card to sign up for offers like the one you mentioned. If you forget to cancel or if the rep refuses or the company is making it too hard to cancel the service just let them try to actually charge the card and it will be declined because the charge is more than the limit you set. I've done this several times and it works awesome.

[bikebum]

Thanks for the tip Pootie22!

[Heywood57]

Citibank has virtual cards, similar to the BofA temp cards.
I use the virtual cards for most internet purchases.
They default to one month expiration and can only be used at one merchant.
Create the card, go do your online purchase, close the virtual number.

[Zamboni]

Thank you for the tip about the temporary or virtual card numbers!  I am definitely going to start using those for anything I think might get hit with an "automatic" recurring payment.

[lady brett ashley]

So as I was signing up she offered me some other service, "Great Fun" I think, with the same exact deal. So I got that one too.

Good deal - but be careful!  We did something similar last year...and it took six months to get that evil fucking "Great Fun" auto-payment cancelled.  Called like 3 separate times to cancel (guaranteed each time that it was, lo and behold, next month $16.99 payment), had to go to our bank twice to try to cancel it from that end.  Finally, the bank gave up and cancelled the card the payment was going through and issued a new one.  The bank did at least refund *some* of the fraudulent charges, and i'm sure we could have gotten it fixed faster than we did with a bit more vigilance, but it was a pretty big headache.

Also, did some online research while we were dealing with it, and sounds like what we dealt with isn't uncommon, but also that some people had no problems with them at all, so it's not a guaranteed disaster, just something to be on the lookout for.

[ritchie70]

If you have a Bank of America credit card there's a pretty cool trick you can for these type of offers (you might be able to do it with other cards but i don't know of others). There is a thing called "shop safe" in the bank of america website that lets you generate a brand new credit card number (primarily for shopping online) and you can set the expiration date and a dollar amount limit on that new card number (you still have your original card and that one works fine, this is more of a temporary card number for shopping online). So you go in, generate a new card number set a spend limit of $2 and use this credit card to sign up for offers like the one you mentioned. If you forget to cancel or if the rep refuses or the company is making it too hard to cancel the service just let them try to actually charge the card and it will be declined because the charge is more than the limit you set. I've done this several times and it works awesome.

That keeps you from paying them, but it doesn't remove your legal obligation to pay them. If you don't cancel something that you agreed to pay, in accordance with the agreement, then they can (and some will) send collections agencies after you.

Or more likely sell the debt for $0.005 on the dollar, but you still may wind up harassed.

[Cassie]

Also spent alot of time & effort to cancel something similar.  I realized it was not worth it. Hope your experience is better.

[bikebum]

So as I was signing up she offered me some other service, "Great Fun" I think, with the same exact deal. So I got that one too.

Good deal - but be careful!  We did something similar last year...and it took six months to get that evil fucking "Great Fun" auto-payment cancelled.  Called like 3 separate times to cancel (guaranteed each time that it was, lo and behold, next month $16.99 payment), had to go to our bank twice to try to cancel it from that end.  Finally, the bank gave up and cancelled the card the payment was going through and issued a new one.  The bank did at least refund *some* of the fraudulent charges, and i'm sure we could have gotten it fixed faster than we did with a bit more vigilance, but it was a pretty big headache.

Also, did some online research while we were dealing with it, and sounds like what we dealt with isn't uncommon, but also that some people had no problems with them at all, so it's not a guaranteed disaster, just something to be on the lookout for.

Oh man, that's so lame. Well, I got emails from both services today and they both allow you to cancel by phone, on the website, or by clicking a link in the email. Hopefully that is an indication that they are better at processing cancellations now. I'll come back and post what happens.

[bikebum]

I got my rebates in my email and they are not what was represented to me by the phone operator. The $40 hotel rebate turned out to be two $20 ones. I am going to try and use both of them on the one room, see if it works. The $40 rebate for Great Fun is four $10 rebates when I buy gas, and one of them is already expired. They all have different date windows. I'm gonna call and see if I can at least get a another $10 rebate that is not expired. Screw you Travelodge :P

I'll let you guys know what happens.

[Zamboni]

Wow, that's a drag.  Good luck!

[bikebum]

I was able to cancel the services without any problems. I requested an email confirming the cancellations; they said they couldn't so I pushed it and they offered to send a letter confirming. I get the letters, and they have account numbers but no contact info, letterhead, nothing that says anything about the company on it. That's fine though, because the last time I emailed them I got auto-responses that say the accounts were cancelled. No charges on my card so far.

Not a bad deal, but not worth the trouble.

[unix_kung_fu]

That is good to hear you were able to cancel.

Re-reading this thread.. re: vritual card numbers. If your bank does not provide this, you can use an old gift card or buy the smallest denomination and leave $1-2 on it and use it for things like these.

But using a GC or virtual number may still leave you open to collections if you ignore it.