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1&1’s 50% Off Sale: But Half Off What?

1&1 is a big domain registrar and web hosting service, and they are celebrating their 20th anniversary in 2008.To attract attention, they have taken out full page ads in computer magazines offering a “50% off Everything*” sale.

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The company has been known for low priced domains, typically $5.99 a year. They just went up to $6.99, but given that they are having a 50% off sale, this would still be a quite a deal.  But the ad says that domains are $6.12 during the half price sale. Huh?

Maybe the answer is that asterisk after the word “everything.” Usually that means that not everything is really on sale. That is not the case here.

*MOUSE PRINT:

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They are only giving you 50% off the first three months of the services they sell by the year. With that kind of logic, a supermarket could advertise 50% off eggs, but in the fine print say that the discount only applies to three of the 12 eggs in the carton.

One has to wonder if this company’s real name is 1&1 = 3.

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Hotwire: Hidden Fees in their “Complete” Prices

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When it comes to shopping for travel, the price that catches your eye is not always the price you pay. And rarely is it lower than advertised.

Hotwire.com is a site that offers discounted airfares, hotel, and car reservations by not disclosing what airline, hotel or car rental agency you are contracting for until after you pay. (It is like Priceline without the price guessing games.)

On it website, Hotwire advertised car rental rates as low as “$13.95 with no hidden fees.”  Just beneath that it listed Boston with rates as low as $5.95. What a deal!  Clicking on that link brings up the typical pricing form where you enter dates of travel.

For a one day rental from March 28 to March 29, the system returned the following price:

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Yes, it is $3 higher than the lowest price, but it still a great deal. The asterisk after “$8.95 per day” goes to this:

*MOUSE PRINT: 

* Rates are shown in US dollars. Total cost for Hotwire Discount rates includes applicable tax recovery charges and fees.

Indeed, this is more good news — $8.95 is price you really pay. Or is it?

*MOUSE PRINT: On the next screen, the truth is revealed:

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Adding the taxes and fees makes the total cost of the car triple the advertised price!

Unfortunately, the problem of advertising incomplete prices is not limited to Hotwire. Most car rental companies, airlines, cell providers, and cable companies attract you with seemingly low priced packages only to relegate to the fine print or your first bill what the true total and complete price really is.

All these services have extraordinarily high fees, charges, and taxes added to the promoted price which can bring the total to 30%, 40% or more than advertised. Here’s a novel idea: companies should make the price you see be the price you pay! 

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LifeLock: Just Say You’re a Victim

LifeLock is a service that aims to protect your personal information from ID theft for $120 a year and they back up their claim with a $1 million guarantee (discussed last week here).

What are some of the things they do to protect you? They order a copy of your credit report annually from the major credit bureaus. They opt you out of pre-screened offers of credit. And they put a fraud alert on your credit reports.

Of course, these are all things you could do yourself for free. And to their credit, after they mention each of these things on their website, they indicate you could do these things too for free but why bother with the hassle. (It frankly is so surprising to see this level of candor, that it makes MrConsumer suspicious that some Attorney General somewhere didn’t require this of them in the past for this company or a prior company.)

Now, as to their putting a fraud alert on your credit report, depending on the circumstances, this may or may not be kosher. Under federal law, only victims of ID theft or those who believe they are about to become a victim of fraud may place such an alert into their credit report:

“Upon the direct request of a consumer, or an individual acting on behalf of or as a personal representative of a consumer, who asserts in good faith a suspicion that the consumer has been or is about to become a victim of fraud or related crime, including identity theft, a consumer reporting agency described in section 1681a (p) of this title that maintains a file on the consumer and has received appropriate proof of the identity of the requester shall— (A) include a fraud alert in the file of that consumer …”

So how in the world can this company represent to the credit bureaus that you have been victim or are about to be?

*MOUSE PRINT: Buried in LifeLock’s terms and conditions is this provision:

“18. … You additionally agree that you have a good faith suspicion that you have been or are about to become a victim of fraud or related crime, including identity theft, that you want to obtain fraud alerts under 15 U.S.C. § 1681c-1, and that you will notify LifeLock immediately if and when you no longer have such a good faith suspicion.”

Unless you read the fine print, you probably would not have known that you were being asked to attest to something that may not be true — that you are a current or imminent future victim of ID theft.

This bit of duplicity has not gone unnoticed. Just a few days ago, Experian, one of the big three credit reporting agencies filed suit against LifeLock for this very practice.