AUTOMATIC DEBIT SCAM

Remember Forrest Gump saying that stupid is as stupid does?  Well, grab a cup of coffee or tassie of tea, cuz here's a little Bless Me Father.......

Back in March of this year, I needed to know someone's prior background......with a good enough reason to validate my curiosity.  Internet searches weren't doing me any good, and then I ran across Checkpeople.com.  I weighed the importance of the information, got brave, and paid for a personal information report.  (May I clarify that the person in question was neither a relative nor a friend.  Rather, someone who may be abusing his/her position of authority.)  The printer spewed out the information from Checkpeople.com, which wasn't worth the cost of the paper it was printed on.  But, I wanted it and paid for it and got it.  Amen.

Yesterday morning while checking my less-used email address, I noticed a withdrawal notice from PayPal made June 8th.  That was 5 days ago.  HUH?  I didn't make any transactions 5 days ago.  I called the listed 800 number and actually spoke with a human. I inquired why this withdrawal was made.  Come to find out, that when I initially made the request back in March, the website put me on an automatic withdrawal account.  From that point on, each month Checkpeople was making withdrawals in that same amount.  Holy monkey sh__t.  An additional $137.49 had been withdrawn from our account since that first transaction in March.  This is how these websites are set up to con us, to scam us.  The human on the other end poured syrup all over me as she explained the money was non-refundable and she was sorry for the inconvenience.  Inconvenience?  Your company has just made me a victim of your automatic debit scam and you apologize for the inconvenience?  What frickin' planet are you from, sweetheart?   

So, I'm confessing to stupidity.  I've learned my lesson.  Can't imagine the number of innocent people who do what I did and get their accounts put on automatic withdrawal every month.  They appear as a minimal PayPal transaction, so that's why I never noticed it before.  

Maybe it's good that I got bit by the snake.  Taught me a good lesson.  I thought I was the most cautious person in the universe, and look what happened.  Beware, kids, we are living in a malicious world.  We gotta watch where we tread, cuz the snakes are crawling everywhere.