Nerdivore (a great site that I strongly recommend adding to your daily reading list) is reporting (via Reuters) that cult icon, TV personality, and GOP pundit Ben Stein has been implicated in a financial bait and switch scheme involving a free credit reporting company that he shills for, freescore.com. The scam runs as such: you request a free credit report and once you receive it, you’re signed up into a monthly service fee without your consent.
Further, according to the blog, flâneur de fraude, the company that owns freescore.com is owned by another comapny with a shady past:
Not shockingly, the company that owns freescore.com, Vertrue Inc., has a history of deceptive business practices. For years it has been figuring out creative ways to gain access to credit cards to charge monthly fees with the hopes that victims won’t notice. If a victim does notice, Vertrue makes them jump through hoops to get the monthly fees removed.
The article goes on to note that Vertrue has logged nearly 2600 complaints against it, according to the Better Business Bureau, not a small feat by such a small company.
Since Stein is also a business columnist for the New York Times, which has a stated policy against knowingly engaging in conflicts of interest as well as performing paid public relations work for financial services companies. So while the initial scandal is a problem for Stein, there may another show to fall on him in the near future.
Related articles
- Ben Stein, predatory bait-and-switch merchant (blogs.reuters.com)
- Consumerist Interviews Goolsbee On Credit Card Reform: Part 2 of 4 [Videos] (consumerist.com)
![Reblog this post [with Zemanta]](http://img.zemanta.com/reblog_e.png?x-id=db1a3079-98f6-480a-a02a-545974d712e8)
Related posts:
