5-Minute Survey

These companies are always looking for a new angle to guilt me into taking their surveys. Here is a new one I received today from HP:

To summarize, if I don't take the survey, I am taking $5 away from the International Red Cross.

This reminds me of the ones at the grocery store cash register, where the guy asks me right before I pay if I want to donate $1 to benefit research on child birth defects. He waits there until I say "No", in front of all of my disappointed friends and neighbors behind me in line. I haven't done it yet, but I am always tempted to go ahead and say out loud what is obviously already implied: "I have absolutely no compassion for kids with birth defects".

Freedom to Be Swindled

I was fed up with my Citibank card for forcing me to change my credit card number after one of their security breaches. So I looked around for the best offer on switching to a different card.

I signed up for the Chase Freedom credit card. It offered 1% cash back on all purchases, plus 5% cash back on gas, travel, and a few other categories. I had a 2,000+ mile driving trip coming up, so with the high cost of gas the 5% back really sounded like a great offer.

About 2 months after using the new card for all of my purchases, I get the following e-mail from them:

So you have to "activate" the 5% cash back option. What the hell? Why would they not just automatically activate everyone? This is just a scam to take back the 5% bonus from anyone who doesn't figure out that you need to click to activate. I'm glad I somehow didn't delete this spam-looking message, or who knows how long it would have taken me to figure out I was being swindled.

When I went to fill out the form to "activate" my 5% cash back, I clicked on the "why is this necessary" link next to the Email address box:

It says "We need to know who you are in order to make sure you receive your bonus". What a loap of crap.