Judy MayerĪ few months later, Mayer discovered charges totalling nearly $400 on her Mastercard. Mayer paid the shipping in order to get the 'free trial.' I had no idea that I was to cancel a subscription. Mayer was on Facebook back in January when she noticed an ad for an anti-aging cream featuring an endorsement from Dragons' Den star Arlene Dickinson. Judy Mayer of Aurora, Ont., is one of those Canadians who paid a steep price for signing up for what appeared to be a great offer. Marketplace has uncovered exactly how it works, including the motives and methods of the mysterious merchants and marketers involved why it continues to work despite more than 26,000 complaints to the Better Business Bureau in the last year alone and what credit card companies could do to stop it. What they actually signed up for is an online scheme known as a subscription trap, which uses sneaky fine print and deceptive marketing techniques, such as fake articles, bogus endorsements from respected celebrities like Ellen DeGeneres and Céline Dion and phoney surveys from legitimate companies, to trick people into paying for products and services they don't want. WATCH| MARKETPLACE reveals how you can avoid subscription traps Friday at 8 p.m.Marketplace has received hundreds of emails from viewers who've been stung by surprise credit card charges they couldn't get reversed after signing up for what they thought were 'risk-free' product trials.

Every week, Marketplace receives dozens of emails from Canadians telling us about all kinds of consumer concerns and deceptive schemes.īut there's one scam that has generated more angry emails than all the rest: the not-so-free face cream trial.

Lumin reddit