If you see something about Vindale Research in your email, delete it!
Hurry – Faster. Stay far away from this Scam!
Just for giggles, I thought I would see what they were all about. Of coarse, it was free to sign up. They didn’t ask for my address information or bank/credit card info. The site was pretty easy to navigate.
I went through their tutorial and almost instantly found out how they operate.
Vindale Research signs up as affiliate marketing partners with various companies.
Affiliate Marketing is a marketing practice in which a business rewards one or more affiliates for each visitor or customer brought about by the affiliate’s marketing efforts.
The tutorial, wants you to click a specific link, to sign up for a “FREE” trial from FreeCreditReport.com in order to get paid $5. Everytime someone clicks that affiliate link to sign up, they are making money for Vindale Research.
Once you go through all the BS associated with creating your account with FreeCreditReport.com, you are then provided a short, useless survey about the sign-up process on FreeCreditReport.com’s site. You don’t get your $5 though, until Vindale Research verifies that you signed up for the FreeCreditReport.com service.
Here is the problem…
You have to stay signed up with the service for a specific amount of time, in order to earn your $5. However, you only have so long to cancel your FreeCreditReport.com service, before you start getting an automatic charge to your credit card, every month.
Tell me again, where I am making money here!
This information isn’t provided to you by Vindale Research. In fact, Vindale Research wants you to sign up with a whole bunch of these companies, as fast as you can get them done.
When am I going to have time to go back and cancel all the free trial periods?
So, I decided I wanted to cancel my account, but they don’t make it easy. First you have to go to the FAQs to find a question about cancelling. Then you have to go to a specific page, where the cancel link is located. This link is located at the bottom of the page, in light grey lettering, so that it is hard to see against the white background. Then once you find the link and click it, you have to fill out an exit survey about why you are leaving.
I filled out the exit survey, and added:
Yeah, Stop scamming the public and your advertisers. You are getting paid by these vendors to sign up customers, then you are tricking your clients into thinking they are evaluating a service, without letting them know they have to cancel each service they sign up for, through each of your advertisers.
I’m reporting you to the BBB and to the Attorney General!
Enjoy!
in the text box.
I’ve already gone through the hassle of finding out how they work, so you don’t have to!