Did I get robbed or what?

My wife is real good with figures and stuff, she always notices if there is a suspicious entry on my credit card bill. She points out to me today that there are two charges of $20 each, one for January and one for February. It is a name she doesn't recognize and wants me to confirm it.

It turns out it is for a membership to a website that I can't recall joining, although I do know the site as I have visited it. It is a site that helps you locate people and I was looking for a friend I have lost touch with. It turns out that I had paid one dollar for some information on the friend I was looking for, or someone with the same name, but that one dollar fee was a special for signing up for the 7- day free trial. The trial was free but you have to cancel before the seven days to avoid paying the $20 a month fee for regular subscription to the site.

I had forgotten about this so I was charged $20 for January and $20 for February for a total of $40. So for a $1.00 fee for a phone number, I paid $40. After my wife pointed it out I called and canceled the subscription.

The man on the phone was very nice and canceled the subscription for me but it got me to thinking. What had happened here?

It appears on the surface that these guys made $39 from me as they charged me $40 after the initial $1.00 (actually 99c). Admittedly it was my fault, somewhere on the site it said that if I didn't cancel within the time frame, they would charge me accordingly. But we have to be on the defensive every minute of every day as there are millions of schemes and attempts to trick a tired person in to parting with a dollar or two---it's called freedom.

I am a political person and watch this crap like a hawk. I had just been had. They had just practiced what they call "marketing" on me. One of their MBA's working with an accountant, a statistician and a behavioral psychologist had figured out that with enough pressure throughout every minute of every day, and enough volume (visitors to the site) a certain number would forget to cancel before the seven day trial period had ended. What with the pressure of the marketplace which is a 24 hour, seven day week, 365 day a year event, and the daily grind-----work, rent, school, family etc., this was a certainty.

I thought of all the people whose lives were more hectic and stressful than mine and how many of them would make the same mistake. This site advertises itself as one of the top 100 visited sites on the internet. I assume this means in the world. How many people made the same mistake I did at $20, $40 $60 a time? It must be in the thousands, perhaps hundreds of thousands, just for this one company. The same sort of scam, goes on every minute of the day around the world.

This is a completely unproductive activity. It is simply another way of fleecing people out of some money; a way of depriving people of some of their wages, money they earned for socially useful productive Labor for the most part. Someone is making a killing this way, and I know it's not the guy I spoke to in customer service.

And I am expected to meekly accept that there is no money available for education.