Special Alert

Watch Out For This Pocket-Picker

I ran across a shady business practice that nearly got me and I wanted to put out the word to other collectors ASAP.  I will have a regular column next week.   

I decided to try and send a signed magazine to CGC for its new JSA service.  I had some questions as to how to submit. I went to the help page of the web site.  This is what I saw at the bottom:

Looks like a CGC AI chat bot, right?  Well, it ain’t.  Click on this link and it actually engages you with a service called Just Answer.  It even engages in a pop-up format with the CGC site in the background, just like my car dealer’s internal chat bot does when I am trying to get a service appointment.  I went ahead with the chat.  However, when I tried to move to a CGC customer service rep to get a real answer, it popped up an application form asking me for a refundable $1 payment and a credit card.  Being the lawyer type, I read the small print and saw that it was a subscription to some service!  I don’t give out my CC number unless I am buying something anyway, and no way was I going to subscribe to something that I would then have to cancel, so I closed it out and wrote a screed about CGC having the balls to force collectors to pay for asking questions about how to submit cards to CGC.  When I grabbed the screen shot and realized that it was actually an ad and not CGC itself, I scrapped that screed. I then found out that other collectors who are not raging paranoids like me had fallen for a Just Answer advertisement that they thought was a site-sponsored chat and had been forced to wage pitched warfare to unsubscribe and try and get their money back.  I dug a bit online and found that Just Answer has complaints at the Better Business Bureau and is a defendant in class action lawsuits over this business practice.

So, be forewarned: that friendly chat box on CGC’s web site is actually a Venus Fly Trap that will try to rip $40 or more out of your pocket and force you into a hellscape of credit card contests and cancellation efforts to undo it.  As for CGC, shame on the mendacious jackals who run it for accepting ads from a business like Just Answer and for integrating the ad into its help page in a way that makes it look like it is part of the CGC site.