Playing with Fire

"If you play with fire, you're gonna get burned." I don't even know where all I've heard that, but I know that I've heard it many times. Aaaaaand I am here today to tell you that it's true. 

The fire that I recently got burned by is swagbucks. I love swagbucks! The more the better, right? That's why I have been trying out more and more special offers. Especially the free trial offers. I had a few scares... the time that freeshipping.com charged me before they were supposed to (they gave me a refund)... the time that I spent money on bigfishgames.com and my swagbucks didn't come through (the swagbucks were eventually credited)... and few others. 

Through these issues I kept reminding myself to be careful and pay attention to what I was doing so that I'd never get charged actual money in my pursuit of online money. Enter stamps.com. I think that their offer was for 450 swagbucks for signing up. What could I lose, right? 

Try THIRTY-TWO UNITED STATES DOLLARS.

Yup. It's like the new version of The Biggest Loser. When I first created my stamps.com account everything seemed well and good. But when I went back later to log in, nothing would work. I tried the old, "Forgot your username/password?" thing. They tried verifying my identity by asking security questions that I had never answered! I tried customer support. They told me that they needed my full name email address before they could help me. I sent that information and they sent me on a roundabout with all of their rigamarole on how they were saving me money and blahblahblah. 

All of this was taking precious time and before I knew it, I was charged the monthly fee of $16. Based on what I have learned from different customer support members, I knew that I had never actually signed up for a "free trial" and had reconciled myself to the fact that the $16 was gone. 

This afternoon I contacted customer support yet again (this round by phone) and barely managed to keep my cool while on the phone. After telling the woman on the other end of the line seven times that I wanted to close my account, she finally agreed to do it. But she said that at this point I have to keep the account at least until February 9th and receive another $16 charge. 

In a nutshell: My desire for free money finally caught up to me and cost me big time. I will never again use stamps.com and do not recommend it to anybody unless they are looking for a long-time account with no need to contact customer support. 

As for the playing with fire? Getting burned again is as likely as getting struck by lightning..... riiiiiiiight? ;) I'll keep doing what I can to rack up those swagbucks and continue getting free stuff. =)