My mother and I had a long, long discussion about how: - Most stuff you buy off TV (infomercials, etc) is terrible - "Try it free for 30 days" means they will charge your card after 30 days - After 30 days, guess what? You're subscribed for life. - It is next to impossible to cancel. - You have no idea what your account number is because you ordered over the phone and didn't write anything down. - It isn't worth it. - It is SO NOT WORTH IT. - You can buy it off eBay/Amazon in most cases without getting stuck in a subscription. So we agreed. Never again. Never again. Just now, "Where's my debit card?" Me: "Down here, why?" (After she lost her debit card twice, I keep it in my purse) Her: "Give it to me! I found that stuff I want to buy!" Me: "Oh no... remember how I told you that we can buy it online instead? Whatever it is?" Her: "But they won't have the right stuff, the commercial said you have to call now, blah blah blah." Me: "No, no... no, no... you're going to get stuck in a subscription." Her: "WHAT DOES THAT MEAN?!" Me: "....??? Like Wen? And like Proactiv? Remember, we talked about this-" Her: "Oh my god, you just want to make sure I get the wrong thing! It's MY money!" I go to Amazon, buy her the stuff, and she's still not satisfied. She apparently won't be satisfied until she gets roped into a subscription.
Thank God they were typical old people who went to bed early. Can’t imagine what they might have seen on Cinemax! Ha!
Someone said St. Jude’s, It’s Saint everyone with my mom! We are a Catholic family and she donates to a bazillion Catholic charities.
Mother doesn't buy things off TV (as far as I am aware) but wow, does she hit the catalogs HARD. Probably gets between 10-20 a week.
Then she returns stuff and doesn't get WHY she has to pay S&H for something she didn't want. I imagine her credit rating is terrible--considering how many times shes returned stuff and won't pay the S&H and then they bill her late fees on and on---I had to straighten out a deal where she bought some shoes, didn't like them sent them back and had been paying late fees on a pair of $19.99 shoes which she refused to pay $9.99 to return. By the time I'd stepped in, she had racked up more than $250 late fees ($39.99 per month!)
So I worked it all out---and the call center people generally aren't even IN the country, so her yelling at them while I am trying to talk on her cell phone isn't helping....finally we got it down to about $50, which honestly, was very nice of them.
She wanted the catalog cancelled, which I did, and asked them to take her off the mailing list FOREVER as this was a company that was hard to deal with. (and frankly just sold junk).
Yep, a few days later and she wants to reinstate her catalog and I won't do it.
I like the analogy of the mouse feeling a surge of delight a finding the "cheese". Mother cannot stop buying stuff, she needs to be receiving 3-6 packages each week, I think it gives her a thrill to see the delivery trucks. But she NEEDS absolutely NOTHING and much of what she buys she never uses, never. She hides a lot of stuff from my brother (she lives with him) as he gets so angry that she wastes so much money.
It's a problem that will have a solution--she's getting pretty close to being held to a 'cash only' situation and w/o a CC she can't shop.
I agree that a lot of these companies do prey on elderly people. My mom can't really handle this kind of thing any more, and some companies are not very easy to work with.
All that my mother saw was the word “free” on the mailer or the magazine insert and she’d be off and running. Never bothered to read the tiny print that said “if not cancelled within X days after the introductory offer...”
Making matters worse - these offers never asked for credit card information, just said they’d bill...
Seems to me they do that on purpose so the chance of the elder understanding that they might actually be changed for something is significantly reduced.
Since I was at my moms IL a few times a week I usually caught things after the first bill - but unfortunately I would have to pay it as the item ironically would arrive on a day I wasn’t there and mom would open it. I just didn’t have the time to repackage things up and take them to the post office for returning.
As I paid my moms bills for her, I’d usually see that first bill. When I’d ask mom about it I would always get the innocent blank look and “I never ordered that”. Eventually, I stopped asking.
Things got more complicated when mom would hide those bills - not wanting me to know she’d fallen for it yet again but not putting two and two together that the stuff would just keep coming and at some point the bill would have to be paid. Ah, the blessed logic of dementia!
Things got simpler when my moms dementia worsted and I was able to have her mail sent directly to my house - without her even missing it. It didn’t stop her from ordering her “free” stuff but at least I only had to go through one cycle of paying for something and then canceling the auto-shipping.
Thing is - this was minor compared to the charity requests mom got on the phone or back when she got her mail - and still had a checkbook.
That was a several year battle that I never did win. In fact - moms been gone over two years and in her last year she wasn’t able to write checks - but here we are three years later - three years of not contributing and I’m still getting dozens of charity requests sent to her every week...in my mail. Grrrrr!
I have also have my name on her bank account so I can check it online (confirm she is paying her bills) and have asked the bank to set a limit on the amount & number of withdraws she can make in a month. It also helps that she no longer drives so I am the only one taking her to the bank.
I'm wrong, but it seems like those who don't have hobbies or other interests are
more likely to fall into this type of trap. And ditto the long conversations, agreements and a few weeks later....back to the same.
Of course, since Dad has declined further into dementia, he doesn't even know how to turn it on and use it anymore, even though it had once been the great joy in his life, so in his mind, it HAS to be broken, because he's a computer whiz! He lost $900 to these people before I was able to get the credit/debit cards away.
It got to the point (fairly early into his diagnosis) before I had all day in-home care for Dad, that I was ready to change our phone number- A once intelligent man, now doing the most outrageously, dangerously stupid things with his financial info over the phone, when HE was the one who taught ME to avoid scams and pitfalls at all costs.
He bought $500 dollars worth of magazines he does not, nor did ever read, and bought 4 more 5-year subscriptions on top of an existing 5 year subscription to NatGeo- we would have been getting 5, count em, 5 identical NatGeo mags every single month for 5 years. One week there would be 2 TV guides, next week 3- Dad, you keep ordering new subscriptions to TV guide, we already get it! Dad, you don't even READ these!
Scariest of all, he could still recite his SSN!!
After a brief moment of lucidity and my showing him what he'd been doing, he was horrified, and willingly gave me the credit/debit cards. BUT, of course he forgot that any of this happened, and then thought he'd lost them. He called my aunt, who at this point was still in denial about Dad's condition, and told her she needed to take him to the bank because he lost his cards and needs new ones. I found this out when I went to use the card to do his shopping and it was declined! So had to straighten it out with the bank. The people there were understanding and supportive. They put me on his account and my name on his checks with his permission even before I had POA, and customer service made notes in his file about the situation. I put up notes all over the house that the cards were in safekeeping and NOT missing. That helped a bit, as well as getting the bank involved. Good luck, I know it's really hard, especially when they don't know what they're doing!
You could sit with her and talk her through how the ad. works, how it attracts and plays her as if she were a little lab rat with a debit card. You could even tape a picture of a cute one to her card, to remind her at the crucial moment. But the only way to get rid of the problem is to get rid of the t.v. and give her something more productive to do.