05/08/2008
With windfalls on the horizon if not yet in the pockets of American taxpayers, scam artists are on the move to snatch your share of the pie. The Internal Revenue Service has already warned of efforts by identity thieves to get you to divulge personal information in any of a number of ways relating to your economic stimulus check that will enable them to steal from you.
In another ploy, a Better Business Bureau employee recently received an email from "George W." advising her to "Get your Federal Grant Check/Stimulus Package Today." The company, Grant Consultant, suggests that you apply for government grants to start your own business, buy real estate, further your education, pay medical bills, or pay off debt. "The Federal Government is giving away Millions of Dollars every day To People Just Like You! This money has to be distributed every year, and it is up to various government agencies to simply decide who they want to give it to. YOU DESERVE TO RECEIVE SOME OF THIS MONEY! . . . There are literally BILLIONS available."
Thus Grant Consultant offers a "Government Grants Toolbox Risk Free!" which, they say, contains "all the tools necessary to get you started . . . to apply for and receive a government grant." The toolbox also includes "TIME TESTED SECRETS that we have never revealed before now."
Besides the "original Grant Consultant" CD, which presumably is the source of all these tools, you also are to receive instant access to the company's members' site, "with live chat representatives, for 7 days . . . a $30 value all absolutely FREE."
For this, you'll pay $1.87 for shipping and handling, and you'll also have seven days' access to their online directories and training.
With your "membership," you receive unlimited access to "our dynamic grant database, that pulls directly from the grant providers, ensuring that you will have the latest information possible."
Membership? If you can read the tiny type at the bottom of the page on which you submit your request for the toolbox, or if you read the Terms and Conditions, you will see that after seven days and your initial $1.87 payment, you are going to be automatically billed $49.95 per month for membership fees. These fees will be charged to you on the credit card you use to pay the $1.87.
Incidentally, you are also agreeing to all Terms and Conditions when you submit your toolbox request. The Terms provide that they may changed at any time, without notice to you, and that continuing to use their website after any change constitutes your agreement to be bound by the change. So unless you review their several pages of terms and conditions frequently, you may not even know what you've agreed to.
The Better Business Bureau has no other information on this company, and we have no complaints so far. What we do have is experience with companies that make something-for-nothing offers. We have file after file of companies that make monthly bank account debits and credit card charges that consumers didn't realize were going to be made. And, although Grant Consultant says you may cancel at any time by giving them written notice seven days' prior to the next payment date, we have a good many consumer complaints against a good many companies who allow cancellations and then simply won't cancel.
The Better Business Bureau has no other information on this company, and we have no complaints so far. What we do have is experience with companies that make something-for-nothing offers. We have file after file of companies that make monthly bank account debits and credit card charges that consumers didn't realize were going to be made. And, although Grant Consultant says you may cancel at any time by giving them written notice seven days prior to the next payment date, we have a good many consumer complaints against a good many companies who allow cancellations and then simply won't cancel.
The choice of what you do with your rebate check is, of course, yours. We urge you, though, not to risk losing those dollars by succumbing to this or any offer without first investigating it thoroughly.